marabouts_," and praying to have their tribute remitted? But the poor people are incapable of taking such an advantage. They were excited by their religious feelings, and believed all the Rais told them. It was certainly a fine compliment for the feast, to men in the situation of the people of Ghadames. And my informant added: "Ahmed Effendi in The Mountains is the rascal and the infidel, and does not tell the Pasha we are a nation of dervishes." Said told me a slave was brought up to day to be bastinadoed, but reprieved till to-morrow on account of the feast. Said's sympathy is always excited on these occasions, he remembers ancient days. On asking what he had done, he said, "The slave stole some dates because he had nothing to eat." My taleb, occasionally rather free in tongue, took upon himself to call all Negroes _thieves_. I admonished him: "The poor slaves got little from this city of dervishes, now and then a little barley-meal, or lived almost altogether on a few dates. It was not surprising they stole to satisfy the cravings of hunger." Berka the liberated slave of Makouran, and Said's intimate friend, now came in, dressed up in his holiday clothes. He asked for Said. "He is gone to The Desert, run away, for he has broken our cooking-pot; see here are the pieces, here's the meat spoilt; what am I to do for dinner?" I added, "He ought to have a good beating." The poor old negro stared and looked really grieved. At last he muttered, "Why, Christian, that _breaking_ comes from God, and not Said." "The truth," said the taleb laughing. Said now came in, having borrowed another pot, and Berka was comforted at the return of his friend. In The Desert, every accident of life is ascribed to an ever-present and all-superintending Divinity!