27th.—­I rose early, having slept little on account of noises of various sorts, which continued all night long.  First, there was a drum perpetually beating, announcing rudely enough the approaching nuptials; then there was a cricket singing shrill notes at my head; and then there was the screech-owl making the valley of Tintalous ring again with its hideous shriek.  Add to all, between the roll of the big noisy drum, the cries and uproar of the people.  This morning there are groups of people squatting all about.  Two maharees are riding round and round one group.  Before another is a man dancing as indelicately as a Moorish woman of the coast.

News of still another razzia ushers in the day.  A small caravan, it is reported, was attacked a few days ago, on the route between this and Zinder.  The principal merchant was killed, and all the goods and slaves carried away.  The few agents now in Tintalous see clearly that this route will become, for the future, safe only for large caravans.  En-Noor says of the villages which were attacked by the tribe of Oulimid, that the people must have been chickens not to have defended themselves; but the fact is, the whole country is now, to a certain extent, abandoned to the pillage of lawless banditti.

In the evening the people contrived to celebrate the preliminaries of the approaching nuptials.  The bride, I now find, is no less a personage than the daughter of En-Noor,—­a full-grown desert princess.  The Sfaxee and several other foreign merchants fired in the evening salutes in honour of the occasion.  The drum was again kept beating all night, accompanied again by the crickets and the screech-owl.  Oh for a quiet sleep!

28th.—­Late in the evening another troop of twenty maharees came to visit En-Noor, and assist at the nuptials.  They were known at some distance by the jingling of the bells, which are always worn on their camels on such occasions.  The drumming was kept up again the greater part of the night, the screech-owl and crickets joining the discord as before.

29th.—­Several of our people have recently been unwell, Yusuf amongst the rest.  They take little care of themselves, and attribute their illness to the ghaseb.  I expect we shall have them all ill in Soudan.

Early this morning I found Ibrahim, servant of the Germans, holding in his hand and playing with a huge scorpion, which he had caught near the tents.  He seemed to have fatigued it so much that it could not sting.  It kept, indeed, always striking with its tail, but very feebly.  Its head was not at all prominently brought forward out of its body, and it looked as if it had no head at all.  It had ten legs.  I told Ibrahim that he was a marabout, at which he was greatly flattered.