eleven days' journey, or about two hundred and twenty miles (twenty
miles to the day); and east and west, eight days, or one hundred and
sixty miles. Aghadez, the largest town or city, stands, as has been
seen, alone; and may be considered as a kind of connecting link,
politically and otherwise, with the black countries to the south. I have
already endeavoured to explain the singular constitution of society in
this large but thinly-peopled tract. We observe there a curious
combination of the monarchical and patriarchal states, with a dash of
democracy into the bargain. Several times I have been reminded of
Homer's heroic age. The princes and the people seem alternately to
appear on the scene, exercising sovereign sway. The great Sultan is
elected from out of the country; but he is compelled to seek the
ratification of the chiefs, the elders, and the populace within. Then
there is the great chief of the Kailouees, whose town or camp is at
Asoudee; with Sultan Lousou, a most influential man; not to speak of the
great En-Noor himself, who has, perhaps, personally, the greatest
political weight of them all. Each of these great men is perpetually
surrounded by an army of retainers, dependants, and slaves; and public
affairs are transacted, partly according to some old routine, difficult
for a stranger to understand, partly after the fashion of "Arabian
Nights," kings meeting casually at the head of great armies in some
poetical wilderness. All these chieftains are both pastors and
merchants. One of their chief articles of traffic is, I am sorry to say,
their unfortunate fellow-creatures. They are the greatest slave-dealers
in the Sahara; two-thirds of the whole commerce is in the hands of the
Kailouees. The Sultans levy duties likewise on the caravans that pass
through their territory--duties which, to our cost, we know to be
neither regular nor moderate; but they have no right to apply taxation
to their quasi-subjects. Sometimes, when they are "hungry," they make a
razzia on a distant tribe, and find both slaves and cattle at their