smaller and stouter; some are fattened like the Mooresses of the coast,
and attain to an enormous degree of _embon-point_. They are not
ill-looking, but offer nothing remarkable in their forms.

I have already set down many particulars of manners, and shall proceed
to do so in the same disjointed way. At a future time all these traits
must be collected to form one picture.[2] For the present I am anxious
about the future progress of the Mission, and impatient, at any rate, to
hear some news of our advance. We cannot do all the things we would. Our
position is almost that of prisoners. We must depend entirely on the
caprice of En-Noor, who, however, may already have laid out his plans
distinctly, though he does not choose to communicate them to us.

[2] Perhaps the note-books of Mr. Richardson, in which facts
are set down fresh and distinct just as they presented
themselves, will be found to be more interesting than an
elaborate narrative. At any rate it has seemed better not
to attempt to do what was left undone in this matter.--ED.

_Oct. 2d._--We have been lately discussing the practicability of going
to Sakkatou, on a visit to the Sultan Bello; and this morning I looked
over, for the first time, some "letters of credit" which Mr. Gagliuffi,
our plausible consul at Mourzuk, had given me. I found that the amount
offered for the use of the expedition in Kanou does not exceed a hundred
and fifty reals of Fezzan, or about twenty pounds sterling, and that the
agent is expressly requested not to advance any more! This extraordinary
document induced me to look further, and it soon appeared that the
documents on which I relied so much were mere delusions. The wording of
the Arabic letter to Bornou was ambiguous; but in as far as I and my
interpreter could make it out, Haj Bashaw, to whom it is addressed, was