To-day my friend from Timbuctoo came up to have another talk.  He was curious to know the object of my travels, and as he would not have comprehended the exact truth, I was obliged to convey it to him through the medium of fiction.  I informed him that I had been dispatched by the Sultan of my country to obtain information of the countries of Africa; that I wrote in a book accounts of everything I saw, and on my return, would present this book to the Sultan, who would reward me with a high rank—­perhaps even that of Grand Vizier.  The Orientals deal largely in hyperbole, and scatter numbers and values with the most reckless profusion.  The Arabic, like the Hebrew, its sister tongue, and other old original tongues of Man, is a language of roots, and abounds with the boldest metaphors.  Now, exaggeration is but the imperfect form of metaphor.  The expression is always a splendid amplification of the simple fact.  Like skilful archers, in order to hit the mark, they aim above it.  When you have once learned his standard of truth, you can readily gauge an Arab’s expressions, and regulate your own accordingly.  But whenever I have attempted to strike the key-note myself, I generally found that it was below, rather than above, the Oriental pitch.

The Shekh had already informed me that the King of Ashantee, whom he had visited, possessed twenty-four houses full of gold, and that the Sultan of Houssa had seventy thousand horses always standing saddled before his palace, in order that he might take his choice, when he wished to ride out.  By this he did not mean that the facts were precisely so, but only that the King was very rich, and the Sultan had a great many horses.  In order to give the Shekh an idea of the great wealth and power of the American Nation, I was obliged to adopt the same plan.  I told him, therefore, that our country was two years’ journey in extent, that the Treasury consisted of four thousand houses filled to the roof with gold, and that two hundred thousand soldiers on horseback kept continual guard around Sultan Fillmore’s palace.  He received these tremendous statements with the utmost serenity and satisfaction, carefully writing them in his book, together with the name of Sultan Fillmore, whose fame has ere this reached the remote regions of Timbuctoo.  The Shekh, moreover, had the desire of visiting England, and wished me to give him a letter to the English Sultan.  This rather exceeded my powers, but I wrote a simple certificate explaining who he was, and whence he came, which I sealed with an immense display of wax, and gave him.  In return, he wrote his name in my book, in the Mughrebbin character, adding the sentence:  “There is no God but God.”