However, in one part of the oasis there are some large gardens which belong to the poor, who are allowed to eat the dates and cultivate patches of the gardens. I think also the Sanctuaries sometimes give alms in the way of the ancient monasteries. These are miserable and precarious resources. Nevertheless, before the Turks so fleeced the inhabitants, I question if there were any poor person ever likely to die of starvation, for the rich members of families provide for the poor, and rich friends for poor friends, and each faction for the poor of the faction, although no poor-rates are levied. Indeed, like the Society of Friends, all took care of their own poor relations and connections. I shall now give the reader a chapter of the domestic history of Ghadames, referring to one of the principal families. Most of the rich merchants of this city have two and some of them three wives. My venerable friend, the Sheikh Makouran, came in possession of one of his present young wives in the following romantic way. (His wives by whom he had his children are long ago dead.) A friend of the Sheikh's died and left a young and beautiful widow, whose wit and grace was the theme of all the city, for such things are esteemed also here. The eldest son of the Sheikh immediately set his heart upon the possession of this beauty, but unfortunately he did not communicate his intentions to the disconsolate lady, who remained in ignorance of his attachment. Meanwhile, El-Besheer, as a party in the firm of his father, purchased the house over the widow's head and made everything ready for the future wedding, and then took a journey of business to Touat, intending on his return to send some old lady, which is mostly the practice, with his message of love and marriage to the widowed solitary. Perhaps he thought the widow could not fail to discover his intentions in what he had already done, mostly preliminary to marriage. But we often imagine others are thinking about us when we are never in their thoughts. So he left for twenty days' journey through The Desert, with all these hopes and fears crowding about him. On his return, to his consternation, he found his old father, of some seventy years of age, had got possession of the young blooming widow, the object he had so fondly cherished on his weary way over the solitudes of The Sahara! But like the doomed Pasha, who receives the imperial order of his decapitation from the hand of the executioner, and kisses it and then bows his head to the stroke, so the young merchant, full of filial veneration for his aged sire, submitted silently and without a murmur to this cruel decree of heaven. It is said of the lady that she pines and mourns out her life for the son. She was kept in profound ignorance of his love until she found herself in the withered, cold, and shrunken arms of the father. She accepted the father to keep a house over her head. Alas! poor woman, whether sold at Paris or London in