From this Mosque we went to a spot half a mile east of the town, to examine five buildings, the appearance of which was much more interesting. These are in a line with one another, and have a passage between them of three or four feet in breadth. They are square; their diameters are about twenty feet, and their height about thirty. They have dome tops, and two windows; one low near the ground, the other high and narrow, and situated about ten feet above it. The rough skeleton of the building is of sun-dried bricks and clay, which have hardened to nearly the consistency of stone; over this, to about half the height of the building, are laid large flat stones of a reddish colour, and unhewn, as found in the neighbouring mountains. Few of these, however, still adhere. The interior of the buildings are perfectly void, and appear never to have had any floors or partitions. From the smallness of the lower windows, it strikes me that these places were the tombs of the Shreefs, who first settled here about five or six hundred years ago; at all events, they now answer this purpose, as each contains a Shreef, whose grave is ornamented with the usual complement of broken pots, shreds of cloth, and ostrich eggs. The people here look with much reverence on these edifices, and tell many wonderful stories of the dead now enshrined in them. On these tombs are the inscriptions about which so many ridiculous tales are told; but two only at present retain them, and these are on the point of falling. The Zuela people, like all other Moors, attribute strange buildings and writings to the Christians, so that some excuse may be offered for those who have circulated such pompous stories of Fezzan. The inscriptions are on the upper part of the walls, and on the sides instead of the front, which makes it very difficult to see them, owing to the neighbouring buildings not allowing sufficient space to walk back in order to distinguish them more clearly. The least perfect has only one or two lines, resembling the tops of letters, on a white cement of about a foot square; the other has about two feet of plaster, and some long letters are sunk in it, apparently Arabic, and much broken. The Shreefs said that these were the only ones they recollected, and that they were written by the Christians soon after the time of our Lord Noah. Having fancied I could distinguish Arabic characters, I made my friends sit on the sand, whilst with my finger I traced them one by one. They immediately saw the resemblance, but said, that having fancied them to be of Christian origin, they had taken it for granted, and never troubled their heads about decyphering them. The letters I drew were these, [Illustration] which I conceive clearly prove the Arabic origin of these buildings. Under these characters is a small piece of very neat cornice, of the size of a cocoa-nut, having little flourishes on it.