Page:Poems Mitford.djvu/164

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notes.

Moorish Merchants, who were travelling to Tisheet, a place near the salt-pits in the great desert, to purchase salt; and the Major, at the expense of a musket and some tobacco, engaged them to convey him thither. Their intention, probably, was to rob and leave him in the desert. At the end of two days he suspected their treachery, and insisted on returning to Jarra. Finding him persist in this determination, the Moors robbed him of every thing he possessed, and went off with their camels; the poor Major being thus deserted, returned on foot to a watering-place, in possession of the Moors, called Tarra, He had been some days without food, and the unfeeling Moors refusing to give him any, he sunk at last under his distresses. Whether he actually perished of hunger, or was murdered by the savage Mahomedans, is not certainly known; his body was dragged into the woods, and I was shewn, at a distance, the spot where his remains were left to perish.

Park's Travels, page 103.