_15th._--The Rais killed two more scorpions after I left him last night. A child was bitten a few days ago by a scorpion, and died to-day. His Excellency hopes they will disappear after the Ramadan. The scorpion, like many other venemous and deadly animals, is a creature of _heat_, and in the winter is never seen. The scorpion usually comes out of his hiding-places, or the crevices of the walls, during night time, and is rarely seen in the day. Various remedies for its bite or sting, or stroke, are in vogue here. People usually employ garlic: they both eat it and rub it into the bitten or stricken part. Others cut round the stung part, and then rub over the whole with snuff. People persist that the scorpion eats dust, but that he is very fond of _striking Ben-Adam_ ("the human race.") Two nights after the scorpion affair with the Rais, to our dread and horror, Said killed a large one close by our beds. We always sleep upon the ground-floor on matting. He was dozing in the night, after his Ramadan midnight meal, when the monster scrambled past by his head like an enormous crab. In the morning he showed me his sting as a trophy of victory. We then examined all the walls in our sleeping apartment, and stopped up cracks and crevices. After a short time the scorpions were forgotten, or we got used to them; and the next one that Said had a chase after, excited in me little attention. So I found, like the Moors, myself a fatalist, or at least became reconciled to the presence of these death-stinging reptiles. I found eventually, in fact, the people killed them with as much unconcern as we do spiders. The scorpion is the only creature armed with the fatal power of destroying life, which, for the present I hear of in the oases of The Sahara. The Arabs, in their hatred of the Touaricks, say, "The scorpion and the Touarick are the only enemies you meet with in The Sahara."