Noon.--I met with a fellow, a sort of swaggering cheap-jack penny-a-liner, who swore that there was no man so learned as himself in all Ghadames, and that he would teach me the history of Ghadames, and all the world, _for money_. He then followed me home, asked me for my journal, and wrote in it five lines of Arabic poetry. Meanwhile I poured him out a cup of tea, putting a large lump of sugar in it. When he had finished his five lines, which he did without being asked, he impudently demanded a dollar for his trouble. I told some Arabs who were present to turn him out of the house. He decamped, but not before giving us his blessing--"The curse of God be upon you Arab dogs, and the Christian dog." Awfully hot to-day. The hottest day since my residence in Ghadames. Yet, strange to say, when shut up in my room, I feel very little of it. My house is only one story high; there is only a single roof between me and this sun of fire--a strong proof of how little is necessary to protect you from the heats of The Sahara. Late at night, when sitting with the Rais, he amused me with pulling off his greegrees or talismans. As he pulled off each he kissed it devoutly, and laid it by gently on his papers. He wears one round his arm in the shape of an armlet, and three round his neck, two suspended with separate ribbons, and one with a silver chain. As he kissed each, he put it to his eyes, rubbing it over the eyelid. I am sadly afraid his charms obtain all the credit of my solution of nitrate of silver. Be it so; it is hard to cure men of this sort of folly, at best a most unwished, unrequited labour[24]. I always tell the Ghadamsee people the medicine I distribute neither belongs to me, nor to the English Consul at Tripoli, but to the Queen of England, and which, I have observed, heightens its value in their eyes. _Douwa min, ând Sultana Ingleeza_, ("physic from the English Sultana",) is a sort of royal talisman which helps the medicine down as a bit of sugar taken with a child's draught.