Only one of my patients came to-day, the little blind boy. The Rais sent me in the evening a fine dish and soup, on occasion of the night of the first day's fasting. The people kept to-night as an _âyed_ or feast. A Touarick took Said, my servant, aside, and whispered mysteriously in his ear,--"Has the Christian fasted to-day?" Speaking to a liberal Moor, I told him the fast was _bătāl_, inasmuch as the Mussulmans ate all night and slept the greater portion of the day, making things equal; that to fast really, as some Christians did, was to eat nothing, night or day. At the time I added, "I am not such a fool as to increase the miseries of this life by fasting when I can get anything to eat." The fellow, laughing, observed, "You English are right." I see the fast is nearly universal, old and young, rich and poor, high and low, all fast. They mix with it strong religious feelings, and I dare say fanaticism, a quality rarely apart from the purest religious sentiment. Still continue our conversations on Timbuctoo. Most of the old respectable merchants have been to Timbuctoo. One of them, Haj Mansour, resided there fourteen years, carrying on a prosperous trade. But so perverse and unstable are human affairs, that, on returning home after so long an exile, with thirty camels laden with the riches of the interior, and with much fine gold, and whilst within a few days of Touat, the banditti of The Desert fell upon him and carried off everything, not leaving a water-skin to quench his thirst! Had he not been near Touat, he would have perished in The Desert. The Haj is quite black, though his features are not Negro. He is now an old gentleman of upwards of seventy, and yet very active. His family is immense; what with women, and girls, and sons, and grandsons, it musters some thirty souls. He told me with bitterness, as if it had been the case with himself, the merchants were often their own enemies, they were so parsimonious that they would not hire a sufficient escort of Touaricks, and so left defenceless in The Desert many were plundered and ruined irretrievably. The greatest misfortune in travelling through the country of the Touaricks is, their chiefs have not sufficient power to control the people, and for whose actions they will not always be responsible. One day you may meet with the best of men amongst the Touaricks, the next day with a band of robbers; such is the uncertainty and insecurity of The Desert.