440 VARIOUS LETTERS The La Mar Zarak of Adams, if any such river exists, may be a corruption of Sagea el Humra, i. e. the Red Stream, a river in the southern confines of Sahara, nearly in the same longitude with Timbuctoo. This river the late Emperor of Marocco, Muley Yezzid, announced as the southern boundary of his dominions ; but from the accounts which I have had of it, it was not of that magnitude which Adams ascribes to the Mar Zarak, nor was it precisely in the neighbourhood of Timbuctoo, when I was a resident in South Barbary : rivers, however, which pass through sandy or desert districts, often change their courses in the space of twenty-four hours, by the drifting of the moving sands impelled by the wind ; instances of which I have myself often witnessed.

If this river proceeded from the Desert, it might have had the name of/ Bahar Sahara, i. e.

the River of Sahara ; the word La Mar is a lingua franca, or corrupt Spanish word, signifying the sea, and might have been used to this poor sailor by a native to make it the more intelligible to him. Many Spanish words having crept into the Arabic vocabulary, and are occasionally used by those Africans who have had intercourse with Europeans.

The next passage for animadversion is as follows : — <« The state in which he represented Tombuctoo, and its being the residence of a Negro sovereign, instead of a muselman."