I caused all the chests of merchandise to be removed into our large room, and with Belford’s assistance opened them, in order to ascertain their contents. They had been packed before my arrival in Tripoli, and Mr. Ritchie had determined that they should not be opened until we reached the Negro country. I found in them, amongst other things, about 600 lbs. of lead, one camel load of corks for preserving insects on, and two loads of brown paper for preparing plants. As these amounted in all to about five loads, which were not worth carrying back to Tripoli, I sent them, with two large chests of Arsenic bottles into Yussuf’s house, taking a proper receipt for them, so that any future traveller or myself might be enabled to receive them. I found that the other goods, including five cwt. of books and two chests of instruments, would load about eight camels: we therefore commenced taking a list of them, and putting them carefully away, when we were again attacked with fever, and confined to our beds, remaining with all our merchandise at the mercy of Arabs and natives. I had at this time occasion to turn off our man, and the woman also who cooked for us, as I had strong reason to doubt their honesty. Yussuf lent us, in our distress, a fine intelligent boy called Barca, who, with our Negro girl, greatly assisted us. The weather having become very cold, we had a fire made in a hole in the ground, round which we sat in the evenings with some of the friends who came to see us. On these occasions they told us many long stories; but Belford’s deafness prevented his being amused with them as I was. Religion was generally the subject of these tales, which, when related by the old Hadje, were usually prefaced thus: “When a man has been three times to the holy house, as I have been, he begins to know something, thank God!” He repeated many marvellous stories of the country of Sindi, or Persia, in which is the bed of the sun, and where grows a tree bearing a fruit resembling a coffin. This growing daily larger until ripe, at last bursts, and out of it a man drops to the ground, who cries “Wauk, wauk; in the name of the merciful God,” and instantly expires, sinking suddenly into the earth. He told me that in Paradise the prophets are permitted by God to ride on animals of extraordinary beauty, called Borāk, whose form is something like that of an antelope, and their swiftness such, that in the twinkling of an eye they can spring out of sight. All the prophets on the bare backs of these animals, but Allah, out of love for Sidina (our Lord) Mohammed, gave him a golden saddle, on which he parades before the faithful. Many more stories equally extraordinary are told and believed all over the country; and in Morzouk are a few copies of some of the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, and the voyages of Sindèbad the Sailor, which are as fully accredited as the Koran itself.