MOUNTED on my camel, pressing on through The Desert, my thoughts still lag behind, and as I turn often to look back upon The City of Merchants and Marabouts, its palms being only now visible in the dingy red of the setting sun, I endeavour to form a correct opinion of its singular inhabitants. I see in them the mixture of the religious and commercial character, blended in a most extraordinary manner and degree, for here the possession of wealth scarcely interferes with the highest state of ascetic devotion. To a religious scrupulousness, which is alarmed at a drop of medicine that is prohibited falling upon their clothes, they add the most enterprising and determined spirit of commercial enterprise, plunging into The Desert, often in companies of only two or three, when infested with bandits and cut-throats, their journies the meanwhile extending from the shores of the Mediterranean to the banks of the Niger, as low down to the Western Coast as Noufee and Rabbah. But their resignation to the will of heaven is without a parallel. No murmur escapes them under the severest domestic affliction; whilst prayer is their daily bread. Besides five times a day, they never omit the extraordinary occasions. The aspirations of the older and retired men continue all the live-long day; this incense of the soul, rising before the altar of the Eternal, is a fire which is never extinguished in Ghadames! Their commercial habits naturally beget caution, if not fear. In The Desert, though armed, they have no courage to fight. Their arms are their mysterious playthings. Their genius is pacific and to make peace--they are the peacemakers of The Desert--and they always travel under the intrepid escort of their warlike Touarick friends and neighbours. Intelligent, instructed and industrious, they are the greatest friends of civilization in North Africa and the Great Desert. But upon such a people, falls as a blast of lightning, rending and shivering the fairest palm of the oasis, the curse of Turkish rule.