Few songs are to be met with which the one learns of the other; for each individual sings exactly what he thinks, without any regard to metre or time. For their dances the natives have a few peculiar melodies, which, however, are frequently altered by variations of their own composition. The young female slaves are heard to sing chiefly in a minor key, and their notes are scarcely audible in the next hut: the song will frequently run in the following strain: “The sun is concealing itself behind the hills, come people to the joyous dance; the cows are milked, the work is done, light the fire; my lover comes to fetch me home, &c.” A tear may be seen to flow from the eye of many a girl as she thinks of her native hills, over these songs; time, however, is capable of assuaging the grief of these poor creatures, and after the lapse of two or three years but few of them devote a thought to their native country. In Egypt I have often conversed with both male and female slaves who scarcely remembered their fatherland, which they the more easily forget, as they meet with treatment in captivity they could not have experienced under the paternal roof; they subsequently adopt the customs and habits of the people with whom they are forced to live, and frequently laugh at the simple customs of their own country. In the houses of the married there is a small elevation, of about one foot and a half in height, in which an earthern pot is immured up to its _embouchure_: this is called “tirankul,” and is for the purpose of fumigating the person. Wood cut into thin shavings, named “klet” and “telch,” is placed in the pot, and ignited, whereupon the person performs the fumigation. This smoke is very tonic in its operation, and so astringent that it corrugates the skin. The shirts are also fumigated with sandal-wood over this pot.