1st, A tax on towns and villages, at the rate of from 100 to 500 mitkals each. The number of towns and villages is estimated at 100; and the value of a mitkal at about ten shillings English: consequently, the tax on each town and village is from 50l. to 250l. sterling. 2d, A tax on every camel’s load of goods (provisions for the market excepted) which enters the capital. The rate of this impost is one mitkal, or ten shillings English, per load. 3d, The fines that are inflicted as a punishment for offences. 4th, The produce of such lands as on the death of the possessors, without heirs, escheat to the Crown. 5th, A small tax on all gardens and date trees. To these several branches of revenue may be added, as another source of considerable income, the commerce in which the King is engaged; for he seems, especially in the articles of trona and senna, to be the principal Merchant in his kingdom. Gold dust constitutes among the people of Fezzan the chief medium of payment; and value in that medium is always expressed by weight. Their common measures of weight, and consequently of value, are, The xarobe (or harrobe) the weight of which is four grains, and which expresses the value of thirty-three piastres of Tripoli, or 6d. sterling. The mitkal, the weight of which is eighty-one grains, and which expresses the value of 668¼ Tripoli piastres, or 10s. 1½d. A single grain therefore is equal in value to 1½d. In the choice of the first of these measures, the xarobe, they seem to have been influenced by the discovery, 1st, That four grains is the usual weight of a hard and durable berry,[9] which is called habbat ell goreth; and 2dly, That half that weight, two grains, is the weight of another and very beautiful berry, which is brought from Nigritia, and to which, from its scarlet colour, and the black stroke that ornaments one of its ends, they have given the name of eyne-deeka, or the cock’s eye. These berries are therefore employed as the common weights for gold dust in Fezzan; for the xarobe and the mitkal have only an ideal existence. But for the greater convenience of exchange, the Merchants of Fezzan are generally furnished with small papers of gold dust, of different values, from that of two xarobes, or one shilling, to such an amount as their business is likely to require. If the value of the article to be purchased is less than two xarobes, the payment is generally made in corn or flour. Thus the smaller articles of provisions, as eggs, onions, &c. are generally purchased by a proportionable value in corn. ~_TABLE._~ { 8¼ piastres of Tripoli, One grain (in weight) of gold is equal to { { 1½d. sterling.