A steel shirt of mail hung upon each man's quarters opposite to his horse, and by it an antelope's skin made soft like shamoy, with which it was covered from the dew of the night. A head-piece of copper, without crest or plumage, was suspended by a lace above the shirt of mail, and was the most picturesque part of the trophy. To these was added an enormous broad-sword in a red leather scabbard; and upon the pummel hung two thick gloves, not divided into fingers as ours, but like hedgers gloves, their fingers in one poke. They told me, that, within that inclosure at Aira, there were 400 horses, which, with the riders, and armour complete for each of them, were all the property of Shekh Adelan, every horseman being his slave, and bought with his money. There were five or six (I know not which) of these squares or inclosures, none of them half a mile from the other, which contained the king's horses, slaves, and servants. Whether they were all in as good order as Adelan's I cannot say, for I did not go further; but no body of horse could ever be more magnificently disposed under the direction of any Christian power. Adelan was then sitting upon a piece of the trunk of a palm-tree, in the front of one of these divisions of his horses, which he seemed to be contemplating with pleasure; a number of black people, his own servants and friends, were standing around him. He had on a long drab-coloured camlet gown, lined with yellow sattin, and a camlet cap like a head piece, with two short points that covered his ears. This, it seems, was his dress when he rose early in the morning to visit his horses, which he never neglected. The Shekh was a man above six feet high, and rather corpulent, had a heavy walk, seemingly more from affectation of grandeur than want of agility. He was about sixty, of the colour and features of an Arab and not of a Negro, but had rather more beard than falls to the lot of people in this country; large piercing eyes, and a determined, tho', at the same time, a very pleasing countenance. Upon my coming near him he got up, "You that are a horseman, (says he, without any salutation) what would your king of Habesh give for these horses?"--"What king, answered I, in the same tone, would not give any price for such horses if he knew their value?"--"Well, replies he, in a lower voice, to the people about him, if we are forced to go to Habesh (as Baady was) we will carry our horses along with us." I understood by this he alluded to the issue of his approaching quarrel with the king.