There are some merchants of consequence from Fezzan, viz. Basha Ben Haloum, Mohammed es-Salah, the agent of Gagliuffi, Sidi Ali, and Fighi Hamit, who always goes to Goujah (blad of the gour-nuts). This country of the gour is distant three months' travelling, making small stages south-west by west. Morocco, Tuat, and the countries of the west, are scarcely represented by merchants in Kanou—there being one or two of them at most. Nor are there any from Egypt or the East.

According to my informant, a small merchant, but well acquainted with these parts, not more than one hundred and fifty or two hundred slaves pass through or from Zinder annually to the north, and about five or six hundred go by the route of Tesaoua to the north, i.e. Tripoli, and a few to Souf. After all, the great slave-market is Central Africa itself.

An affecting incident is told of the people of Korgum during the late razzia. The Sultan of Zinder besieged one town four days, and would not allow the people to drink water. They then sent word that "they did not know either God, or the Prophet Mahommed, or the Sheikh of Bornou, only him, Sarkee Ibrahim of Zinder, as their ruler and lord, and prayed him to give them water and peace." The Sarkee replied, "When my brother fled to you, you also would not allow him to drink, nor will I now permit you; therefore surrender into our hands." The people of the town held out these four days, and then during a night they all fled to the rocks and escaped.

There are but few places to make razzias upon around Zinder, except on the Sheikh's provinces, unless the Sarkee will go to Maradee, and there he is now in friendship, or else is afraid to move in that direction. In the account of the booty, it is to be understood that all of it was not brought to Zinder, some having been distributed amongst the troops and volunteers of the rest of the province. I am told that the greater part of the slaves will be sent to Kanou for sale. It has already been observed, that only a few slaves go to the north in comparison with the numbers captured. The bulk of the slaves of the razzias are employed as serfs on the soil, or servants in the town. In Kanou, a rich man has three or four thousand slaves; these are permitted to work on their own account, and they pay him as their lord and master a certain number of cowries every month: some bring one hundred, some three hundred or six hundred, or as low as fifty cowries a-month. On the accumulation of these various monthly payments of the poor slaves the great man subsists, and is rich and powerful in the country. This system prevails in all the Fellatah districts.

At dusk, there was a hue and cry near our house. I ran out to see what it was: the noise and stir was nothing less than an attempt of a slave to escape. The poor fellow was surrounded by a mass of men and boys, all anxious to seize him and deliver him to his master, to obtain the reward.

My sympathies certainly begin to cool when I see the conduct of these blacks to one another. The blacks are, in truth, the real active men-stealers, though incited thereto frequently by the slave-merchants of the north and south. It must be confessed, that if there were no white men from the north or south to purchase the supply of slaves required out of Africa, slavery would still flourish, though it might be often in a mitigated form; and this brings me to the reiteration of my opinion, that only foreign conquest by a power like Great Britain or France can really extirpate slavery from Africa.

3d.—The sky never gets clear here till late at night. I read several pieces of Milton's poetry. I went to the gardens to see the wells: people fetch water from the wells of the gardens, where the supply is sufficiently abundant. I observed in the gardens the henna plant, the cotton plant, the indigo plant, and the tobacco plant. All these appear to be commonly cultivated in the gardens of Zinder. There are scarcely any other vegetables but onions, and beans, and tomatas; but the people cultivate a variety of small herbs, for making the sauce of their bazeens and other flour-puddings. The castor-oil tree is found in the town and in the hedges of the gardens in abundance.

A Tuarick woman was brought here to-day for me to cure. She had been in an ailing, wasting state, for the last four years; the husband said that the devil had touched his wife, and reduced her to this state. Another woman was brought with an immense wen upon her abdomen. I have given away nearly all my Epsom salts, and now supply emetics. It is necessary to purge these people immediately, in a few hours, or they think you do nothing for them, or will not or cannot do them any good. Many Tuaricks come from the open country. We have also frequent cases of ophthalmia, mostly from the villages around.