Following Shurmalkee’s advice, we started, but certainly not to see the town, though we passed through it; for with eyes bent upon the ground, we carefully picked our way along the narrow street, not four feet wide, the tops of the stinking skin wigwams and mat-huts presenting one uniform dark level, just the height of our noses. The outskirts of the town were equally offensive, but more particularly marked by the vast quantity of bones of all eatable animals strewed about, and the vestiges of numerous cooking fires, everywhere telling of the sites of former houses, and that a few weeks before the fair must have been even more extensive. About half a mile to the left of the town, on a slightly elevated mound of sand and coral, was a ruined mosque, the only appearance of a stone building in the neighbourhood. To this we proceeded, our conversation turning upon the dirtiness of the town, its low flat appearance from every point of view, the singular character of its inhabitants, and the great importance Berberah might assume in the possession of some highly civilized country, (we meant Britain, of course,) as one point from whence to spread through Africa the benefits arising from science, and the happiness attendant upon a knowledge of the Christian faith. Around the mosque were numerous graves, each consisting of a low heap of stones in a line six feet long, enclosed in a large circle of single stones, the diameter of which sometimes exceeded twenty feet. The direction of the graves were due east and west, and a small space or opening in the circle invariably to the south, formed a kind of entrance into its area. They differed from the strictly Islam tomb in not having the two little flat stones at the head and foot, in their less conical form, and in the circular enclosure. Their vicinity to the ruined mosque told, however, of the profession of the Islam faith during the life of the deceased, whilst in the manner of the burial it appeared that surviving friends had still adhered to the customs of their forefathers. I might, too, have been mistaken in the real character of the building, and that which I hastily concluded to be a mosque, may have been some remains of a temple of the ancient faith professed by the Affah nation, and which I believe was Sabianism.