bring upon you powerful adversaries, before whom you are not able to stand. The ill-usage I have met with will not be easily passed over either in Abyssinia or at Sennaar. I am neither servant nor merchant; and it has been your ill-luck to try your wicked experiments upon a man like me, who never in his life carried much money about him, because he never valued it." _Moul._ "You must forget all, and I will be your friend with the Shekh, since you come from the Sherriffe of Mecca." "And I, too, says the other, for the kindness you have shewed our brother Ismael there, in carrying him home from among the Kafrs of Habesh; and if Fidele cannot procure camels, we will try and help him; so go in peace, and get ready." We had scarce got rid of this real danger, when the apprehension of an imaginary one struck us violently. The water at Teawa is stagnant in pools, and exceedingly bad. Either that, or the bouza, a kind of new beer which they sent us with our meat, had given all of us, at the same time, a violent diarrhœa, and I was tormented with a perpetual thirst ever since we had been overtaken by the simoom; and the bouza being acid, was not only more agreeable, but, I thought, relieved me more than bad water; in this, therefore, I certainly had exceeded. When we found we were all taken ill at the same time, it came into our wise heads that Shekh Fidele had given us poison in our dinner, and we were very much perplexed what we should do the next day. None of us, therefore, tasted the meat sent us; when at night, our friend, the black slave came, and to her we frankly told our doubts. The poor creature fell into such violent fits of laughing, which followed so close the one upon the other, and lasted so long, that I feared she would have expired upon the spot. "It is the water, says she; it does so to all strangers;" and then she fell into another great fit of laughter. "Child, answered I, you know the Shekh is not our friend, and there is no easier way to get rid of us than by poison, as we eat everything that comes from you without fear."--"And so you may, says she; the Shekh could do no such thing without our knowledge, and we would rather all be burnt alive than be guilty of so vile an action. Besides, says she, this is not like Habesh, where both meat and drink, brought to you, are tasted by the bearer before you use them. There is no such thing as poison in Atbara; the lance and the knife in the field, that is the manner in which they kill one another here."