Niger

Hobart when a change in the government wiped
out Mungo’s plans from immediate practicability.
The immediate sailing was countermanded, and
the question whether the expedition would set out
at all left to the new Secretary, Lord Camden.
Mungo lost his temper and bearded the new
Secretary in the Colonial Office. Was the expedi¬
tion to go, or was it not ? The Secretary temporised.
When he had looked into all the details—Mean¬
time, he understood from his officials that Mungo
was by no means proficient in Arabic and had
suffered considerable inconveniences in consequence
on his previous exploration. Had he not better
remedy this by tuition during the next few months ?
Fuming, Mungo sought round London for an
Arabic tutor. Presently he laid hands on him in
the person of a stray Moor, one Sidi Ambak Bubi,
a pallid man shivering in the sharp blow of London
March. He was to shiver with considerable more
intensity in a week or so. With Mungo he journeyed
up to Peebles, where his advent woke that somnolent
borough to interest for the first time in its recorded
history. Peebles ran and gaped and stared much as
the African villages had done at sight of Mungo.
The Sidi’s opinions of his reception are not recorded.
One hopes he later returned to Barbary and wrote
an account of his Travels in the Interior of Scotland.
Mungo gradually allowed his practice to collapse
while he toiled in the mazes of the Arab script or
kept up dinner-time converse with the Sidi in the
unauthentic Arabic of the Barbary coast. It was,
270