The _Royal Asiatic Society_ no doubt will soon find his mark, or cross, His Turfy Highness not being expected to be a _letterato_, in Cuneiform, wedge-shaped or arrow-headed characters upon the unbaked or sun-dried bricks thrown out of the famous Nineveh mound, so that at last Nimroud will have full justice done him by a grateful posterity. [38] Pliny. This vulgar error of antiquity is cited from the Greek of Aristotle. Λεγεται δε τις παροιμα ὁτι αει τι Λιβυη καινον. CHAPTER VIII. FAST OF THE RAMADAN. The Shâanbah and Banditti of The Desert.--Native Plays and Dances of Ghadamsee Slaves.--Aâween, or Square of Springs.--The Women of Ghadames, their Habits and Education.--The Ghadamsee and Berber, or Numidian Languages.--Varieties of People and Population of Ghadames.--Charge of corrupting the Scriptures.--Ben Mousa Ettanee.--The Bishop of Gibraltar.--Continue teaching Geography.--Ruin of the Country.--Approaching end of the World.--Seeing the New Moon.--My Taleb disputes about Religion.--Movements of Banditti.--The small Force by which the Turks hold Tripoli. _28th._--HEARD the _Shâanbah_--‮شعانبة‬--and Touaricks are about to have a set-to. Last year they had a skirmish, and the Touaricks killed about eighty of the Shâanbah. These latter are going to avenge their defeat; they will attack the open districts, and then proceed to Ghat. The Shâanbah inhabit a desert of sand in the neighbourhood of Warklah--‮وارقلة‬--about fifteen days from Ghadames, and four from Souf. They are independent tribes, but small in number, not more than from five to six hundred. Nominally, however, they are located in French Algerian territory. They have been celebrated from time immemorial as the robbers and assassins of The Desert--_to be a brigand_ is, with them, an hereditary honour--and they are equally the dread of the people of Warklah, whose neighbours they are, as of stranger merchants and caravans. They have a well of water scooped out in the sandy regions where their tents are pitched, and here they live in a horrid security, defying all law and authority, human and divine, and all the neighbouring Powers. Around them is an immensity of sandy wastes, and none dare pursue them to their abhorred dens. Horses, indeed, would be useless; and camels might wander for months without water, and perish before coming upon their hiding places in these dreadful regions. "Two hundred men would require four hundred camels, eight hundred water-skins, and provisions for two months," says the Rais, "and therefore we must leave them to be exterminated by time." Unfortunately, they are recruited from the bad characters of the Souafah, a kindred tribe of Arabs, and other outlaws. The Shâanbah are the great professional bandits of the North, but there are some other fragmentary tribes, located on the confines of The Sahara, and the valleys of the Atlas. Particularly I may mention the horde of