They who can afford it (and there are very few so fortunate) spread a preparation of lime over the mud; which, as the cement is usually well made, forms a surface impervious to the weather, while the coating remains in good condition. The rain which falls is in these cases highly beneficial, since it is carried off by spouts into some general reservoir, or is collected in large earthern jars for the daily consumption of the house. By far the greater number of houses are, however, unprovided with any defence of this nature; and if the precaution of beating down the mud which forms the terrace, sufficiently hard to make the water run off, be not adopted at the commencement of the rains, it is more than probable, that the whole of the building so neglected will disappear before the season is over. As the religion and the laziness of an Arab equally prompt him to depend more upon the interference of Providence, than upon any exertions of his own, this precaution is often neglected; and after having borne, with exemplary patience, all the dirt and inconvenience occasioned by the passage of the rain through the mud over his head, he is roused from his lethargy by the screams of his wife and children, alarmed, or badly wounded by the fall of the roof, or by some serious accident from a similar cause, by which he is a sufferer himself. Many persons were severely wounded at Bengazi in the winter during which we were confined there; and it is probable, that there are accidents in the town every year, occasioned by similar neglect. When a house falls, it is generally left in a state of rubbish and ruin, and the survivors of the family remove to another spot without troubling themselves further about it: the consequence is, that the streets are often nearly blocked up by mounds of this nature disposed in various parts of them; which form in the winter-time heaps of mud and mire, and, in the dry weather, scatter thick clouds of light dust in the faces and eyes of the passengers.