— 14 —

to Khartoum with my cousin Mohammed Abd el Rahman, who sold them and returned with more

merchandise on the fourteenth of October 1859.

Praise be to God the Omnipotent, the Creator of

land and sea.

JOURNEY TO THE NYAM = NYAM*

COUNTRY 1859.

"While 1 was in the land of G6I0, I learnt that

there was a vast tract of country to the south-

west that abounded in buffalo and elephants, which

were so many in number that ivory was reckoned

of little worth. The Sultan was said to be a just

ruler named Tikma, so I packed up my bales and

went forth a twenty-five days' journey to the Sultan

of the Nyam-Nyams, taking a sumptuous present

with me. Now when first we arrived at Dar Tikma,

we were amazed to find that his compound was

surrounded with a palisade of elephants' tusks,

some three or four thousand in number. So we

asked permission from the Sultan to trade in his

country, and were given leave to do so in the

land of the cannibals, the land where there are no

graves. But he understood not how it was that we

set such store by ivory, and we told him that it

was simply in order to convert it into powder : so it

* A generic and onomatopoetic name applied to the cannibal tribes

in that part of the Sudan.