186 JOURNEY TO CENTRAL AFRICA.

home. During the afternoon three slave-merchants arrived, in four days from Abou-Hamnied. Their caravan of a hundred and fifty slaves was on the way. They were tall, strong, handsome men, dark-brown in complexion, but with regular fea-The Wells of Murr-Hat.

tures. They were greatly pleased with my sketch-book, but retreated hastily when I proposed making a drawing of them.

I then called Eyoub into my tent, who willingly enough sat for the rough sketch which heads this chapter. Achmet did his best to give me a good Christmas dinner, but the pigeons were all gone, and the few fowls which remained were so spiritless from the heat and jolting of the camel, that their slaughter anticipated their natural death by a very short time.

Nevertheless, I produced a cheery illumination by the tentlanterns, and made Eyoub and the Bisharees happy with a bottle of arakee and some handfulls of tobacco. The wind