brother Hassan, coveting my clothes, wished to be engaged. Some
tedious hours were wasted on this subject. The sultan, at the
instigation of these advocates for service, would have it, if I wished
to travel according to the custom of the country, I must take more men
with me as a guard. I, on the other hand, neither wanted them nor
could afford to pay them, as I had been so extensively plundered--but
wished to exchange Sumunter for his brother, and promised high rewards
if he would take me through the journey. To put an end to the
discussion, I struck my tent, never to be pitched again, and waited
patiently until the camels came. It was not until near sundown that
the camels were ready and the march commenced. The sultan then ordered
Hassan and the naughty boy Abdullah, against my wish, to accompany me
on the journey; and we set off, leaving two or three loads behind to
be brought up on the morrow. The march was a short one, made to
relieve the one beyond; for the spring of water we were now drinking
from was the last on this side the range. It led us up a gradual but
tortuous ascent, very thickly clad with strong bushes, to a kraal or
ring-fence of prickly acacias, which was evidently made to protect the
Somali's sheep from lions, leopards, hyenas, and freebooters suddenly
pouncing on them.

We remained here three days, sending the things I had brought in
relays across the mountain, and fetching up the rear ones. The sultan
could not lose the opportunity afforded by my detention to come again
and beg for presents, and I gave him a razor to shave his head with
and make a clean Mussulman of him. On finding he could get nothing
further from me gratis, he demanded that a cloth should be paid to the
man whom my camel-drivers had robbed of the goat at Adhai, and, before
retiring, wished me urgently to take a letter for him to Aden,
petitioning the English to allow him to form an expedition by sea, and