This morning paid another visit to Haj Ahmed, the Governor. Found him very friendly. He talked politics. I explained to him the circumstances of the war between France and Morocco, suppressing the most disagreeable parts for a Mahometan. In the course of conversation I was surprised to hear from Haj Ahmed, "Now, since these twelve years, Tripoli belongs to the English." I used vainly all my eloquence in Arabic to convince him of this error, which has been propagated since the removal of Asker Ali from the Pashalic of Tripoli at the instance of the British Consul. I then spoke to his Excellency of the necessity of sending some trifling presents to the Queen of England, as a sign of friendship, begging him to speak to Shafou. He replied, "The Touaricks have nothing but camels." The Governor has a tremendous family. First of all, he has seven wives and concubines, then nine sons and six daughters. One of his female slaves repeated to me all their names, a complete muster-roll. When I visited the Governor again, I congratulated him upon having so large a family. He observed smiling, with great self-complacency, "Why, Yâkob, do you call this a large family? What is a large family with you?" I told him eight and even six children was a large family. At this he affected great surprise, for he had heard that generally European females have three or four children at a birth. Haj Ahmed is a man of about fifty, rather good-looking, stout and hard-working, but inclining to corpulency, very unusual in The Desert. He is not very dark, and is of Arab extraction, and boasts that his family came from Mecca or Medina. He pretends that his ancestors were amongst the warriors who besieged Constantinople, previous to its capture by the Turks. He is a native of Touat, but has been settled here twenty years, where he has built himself a palace and planted large gardens. He is a shrewd and politic man, and has, in a certain degree, those jealous feelings of Christians which are peculiar to the Moor. He dresses partly in the Moorish and partly in the Touarick style, indeed, like all the Moors of Ghat, who are called Ghateen. He is, perhaps, not very learned, but is assisted by his nephew, a young Shereef of great learning and amiable manners. I asked some of the Ghatee people, who was their Sultan? They replied, "Haj Ahmed; Shafou is not our Sultan." The Touaricks, however, have absolute control over all affairs, and Haj Ahmed stands in the same relation to Shafou, being governor of the town, as the Sheikh El-Mokhtar, who is governor of Timbuctoo, under the Sultan of Jinnee. But, Haj Ahmed, himself, disclaims all temporal authority, he repeatedly says in our conversation, "I am not Sheikh, or Kaëd, I'm only Marabout. All the people here are equal. When you write to the Consul, tell him I'm only Marabout." The fact is, there are so many Sheikhs here that it is no honour to be a Sheikh. The honour is too cheap to be valued, and is as much repudiated as a French Cross of