man belongs to the tribe called Sgomara, if I have caught the name
correctly.

_18th._--I rose early, having had a bad headache during the night
through eating meat in the middle of the day. Whatever is eaten in the
middle of the day must be taken very sparingly. I believe the greater
part of the diseases with which foreigners in these countries are
afflicted arise from want of sufficient attention to diet. We must take
great care of our health just as we are entering Soudan. The weather is
still cool, especially in the morning. The prevailing wind during these
last twenty days has been E.N.E., which is very refreshing. The Moorish
merchants pretend that in Soudan it is now very cold.

I received a visit from the young Shereef, whose conversation smacked a
good deal of a disagreeable curiosity respecting my movements and
intentions in Central Africa. I therefore gave him a very ordinary and
cool welcome. This fellow has been here some time, and never offered to
pay us a visit before. En-Noor has been feeding him during his stay. He
displayed a good deal of shrewdness, and is well acquainted with the
Christians of the Mediterranean. He is going to visit his brother in
Zinder, and then returns to Tripoli by the way of Bornou and Mourzuk.
Like all these shereefs, or marabouts, he pretended that had he been
with us, or had we travelled with him from Mourzuk to Tintalous, no one
would have dared to molest us; an assertion wholly false, for the
Tuaricks care little for marabouts when they are bent on plunder.

A young woman has just arrived from a distant village, with the express
object of procuring from the Taleb (Overweg) a medicine to produce
abortion: she says she has been gadding, "barra" (out of her mother's
house), and is frightened lest she should get a good beating. On