Went to examine the Great Spring of Ghadames this morning, which is situate on the west side of the city, but conveniently between the two grand divisions of the population, the Ben Wezeet and the Ben Weleed. It was to me a _delicium_. What a revolution has my opinions undergone respecting water since I have travelled in The Thirsty Desert! Never was such an enthusiastic conversion! But were all conversions so harmless, how happy for mankind! Some thirty swallows are skimming its gaseous-bubble surface, playing off their wing-darting delights. The Spring or Well is perennial, as old as the foundation of the city, and may have ran for ages before the palms were planted around it by the hand of man, or sprung up from a few date-stones left by some chance fugitives who had stopped to taste its waters, and then held their way on in The Desert. Without the Spring the city could have no existence. It runs into a basin made and banked up for it, an oblong square of some twenty yards by fifteen. In its deepest part it is not more than six feet. The water is hot, averaging a temperature of 120 degrees, and upwards, it being too hot to bathe in near the orifices, whence the water gushes with gaseous globules, which continually rise from the bottom. But the orifices are not visible, and hence an air of mystery is thrown over this spring of "Living Water." The people say it was created by God on the same day when the sea near Tripoli was made. The gaseous particles are larger and more numerous in the centre, where is the great force of the Spring. The water is tolerably good, but a little purgative. It is usually allowed twelve, but some give it twenty-four hours to cool before drunk. The form of the basin may be thus rudely represented:-- [Illustration] A. Small bathing-places. B. Steps where the women descend to fill their jugs with water.