The shaved head and chin are Philistine, and, therefore, perhaps the Jews were forbidden to shave the corners of their beards, and the lock on the temple remains their distinctive mark. The first man who shaved the chin daily at Rome was Scipio Africanus. The pith of the festouk serves as a slow match. It was in it (νάσθηξ) that Prometheus concealed the fire he filched from Heaven. These four plants seemed equally distributed over every patch of ground, and extended over the whole face of the country. The flowers of the asphodel stood higher than a man. The soil is mere sand; but between the clumps of flowers a little grass might be seen. About seven o’clock, it having been some time dark, we came suddenly upon fires and crowds of squatters, and bales heaped around them: the herds of crouching camels had a strange appearance among the people and the smoke. It was a small caravan settled round a Douar. We were preparing to pitch outside, but in the hurry of our departure, or rather flight, the tent pins had been forgotten. The sheik immediately removed his family out of his own tent to accommodate us. At length I beheld an Arab camp--at length I entered an Arab tent! I would not have exchanged that sight for the possession of a palace. That first hour must remain associated with every effort to picture the ancient world--with every judgment of its present condition. When we were comfortably arranged, the sheik brought a flat bowl with a pile of _hot scous_. As he set them down he said, “scou!” The two Scotchmen of the party had been surprised at the sight of the dish, but they were electrified when they heard the word: their astonishment burst forth in a way that puzzled and amazed the sheik. In his turn he was delighted with the explanation. The Douar, the Buled, the Cabaile, are mere extensions of the family and multiplications of the tent: the blood relationship runs through all; the parentage, therefore, of a race is of as much interest to them as that of an individual. “Every Arab of the present day,” says Burckhardt, “can tell back his fathers and their collateral relatives to the ninth generation.” In the last generation a Highlander would do the same.[247] But memory, like man, has lost its early longevity. At the time of Mahomet every Arab could trace back twenty generations.[248] through ages; whose people had remained almost to our