64 AFRICAN WANDERINGS.

SO zealously and well. There it pleased M. Thibaut to fall into serious meditations over Europe's weal and woe, from which not even his best friend's persuasions could arouse him, or prevail on him. to embrace some more active career, as then every thing was open to Europeans, who had only to choose their own degrees, as doctors or apothecaries, professors or instructors, to have such allowed them in Egypt, But the philosophic Thibaut would have held it a disgrace to have resigned his valuable meditations for the duties of instructing and drilling recruits, so did not in any way trouble himself about an instructor's office or the good pay attached to it ; till at last Soliman Pascha lost all interest in a man's affairs, who, as he said of himself, was without mind or energy, but wlio had in the meantime been brooding over another, though far less honourable plan, Avhich he now put in force. He became commissioner to the great slave-dealer, Joseph Vaissere, a Frenchman of Languedoc, who with the " Croix d'honneur " (?) on his breast, parades the slaves' bazaars, buying and selling these unfortunates ; with him our philosopher journeyed to the Bellad-Sudan, the Goldrich Land. But ere long he had bored himself enough with men and men's affiiirs, so he now cast his eyes on the animal kingdom, of which, with other men's money, he picked up some curious specimens, and so ere long we find him first in London, then at Paris, where he gained himself high fame as showman and proprietor of some living giraffes (saraf ). His project of conveying a living hippopotamus to Europe failed, but he at least boi'e off in triumph with him the brute's skin. In London he became acquainted with his present Dulcinea, Madame Sara, who had arrived in that capital with an English family, a slave from Kordofan, a most interesting person, and who, in addition, is the one witli Avliom tlie Vice-Admiral FeizuUa displays his accomplishments in English.

It is said that in former years she had been most pretty, as far as a black can be so ; of this, indeed, some remains may still be traced, though now good living, high indulgence in idleness and repose, have swollen out her once well shaped form to colossal dimensions, and repeated and full draughts of darling merissa, it is whispered, have aided much in this. Mrs. Sara had picked up some property, reason sufiicient that Mons. Thibaut should pick up her, and with her and her money return to Cliartum, where he again set up his 1