Among the plagues that await the traveller in Berber the insolence of the slaves is the most intolerable. Being considered as members of the family in which they reside, they assume airs of importance superior even to those of their masters. The latter are afraid to punish or even seriously to reprimand them for their offences, as they can easily find opportunities of running away, and by going to the Bedouins or the Sheygya they are safe from any further pursuit. One of the slaves of Edris, to whom I had already made some little presents, tore my shirt into pieces because I refused to give it him, and when I applied to Edris for redress, he recommended patience to me, for that no insult was meant. The grown up slaves are always armed; they hold themselves upon a par with the best Arabs, and feel humbled only by the conviction that they cannot marry the Arab girls. The insolence of the slaves, as well as of the people in general, is in nothing more displayed than their behaviour with regard to smoking; if they see a stranger with a pipe in his mouth, they often take it from him without saying a word, and are unwilling to return it before they have smoked it out. To a smoker, as all the orientals are, nothing can be more disagreeable. The people of Berber are themselves immoderately fond of tobacco, but they smoke only at home when they expect no visitors, and scarcely ever carry their pipes abroad, because tobacco is a very dear commodity, and they fear lest the best whiff should fall to the lot of others. I have often seen the Egyptian traders, men who would rather give up their dinner than their pipe, reduced to desperation by the impudence of their Berber visitors. In a small treatise on physiognomy by Ali Ben Mohammed El Ghazali, wherein he paints the characters of the different Mohammedan nations, he thus describes the Nubians: “They are a people of frolic, folly and levity, avaricious, treacherous and malicious, ignorant and base, and full of wickedness and lechery.” This picture is true in every part, applied to the people of Berber; for besides what I have already said of them, they are of a very merry facetious temper, continually joking, laughing, and singing. Even the elderly men are the same, and they have at least retained one good quality of their Arabian ancestors; they are not proud. The Mek of Berber is satisfied with common civility, and assumes no distinction of rank; the slaves of his family, shew much more haughtiness than himself.