In Mohammedan law, sentences, whether capital or otherwise, are no sooner pronounced than they are carried into execution. There is a delectable variety in the modes of exit from this world, which the law prescribes for capital offenders. Arabs are generally hanged, seldom decapitated; Turks are mostly strangled; Jews are dealt with after the manner of Arabs. Women are drowned; and the higher classes, and princes, enjoy the privilege of being poisoned. In some few cases, criminals are sentenced to be burned. One mode of death—which we Europeans regard as rather an honourable one—is regarded by the Koran-readers and the orthodox portion of the community as heterodox in the extreme. A knowledge of Roger Bacon’s invention, gunpowder, never having been vouchsafed to the Prophet in any of his revelations, the Faithful, of course, are unable to find a single passage in the Koran to justify sentencing a soldier to be shot. But in this, as in many other instances, the common sense or convenience of the Pasha leads him to deviate from the Cadi’s opinion, and to overrule the _Sharrah_. On leaving Cafsa, our travellers found themselves fairly in the Sahara. “As the day advanced,” says Mr Davis, “the heat increased, and by noon became almost intolerable. Besides the excessive heat of a burning sun, we had to endure the noxious influence of the southerly wind, which, fortunately for us, did not blow with all its wonted fury. Its effect, however, was apparent, not only on myself, but also on some of my friends. The weakness and lassitude these combined agencies produced, manifested themselves by the perfect stillness and sullenness which prevailed in every group of travellers, as they either walked or rode along. The heat it collected in its sweep across the burning sands, it now freely vented on us,—and that to such a degree that some of its puffs actually resembled in their effects the flames issuing from a furnace.” No wonder that the Psylli of old should have attempted the extermination of so destructive a tenant of the waste! This nation, says Herodotus, who in ancient times inhabited a district bordering on the _Regio Syrtica_, having once had all their reservoirs of water dried up by the south wind, advanced into the Sahara in order to make war upon it; but the enemy, defying bow and arrow, opposed them by blowing with extreme violence, and raised such clouds and torrents of sand that the poor Psylli were overwhelmed, and all of them perished! What African traveller does not regret that the victory was on the side of the noxious element!