There were a few modern antiquities, chiefly the stones of Moorish forts and castles. Many villages in ruins, destroyed in the late wars. And Mohammed, like a thoughtless idiot, ridiculed the rude desolations of his brethren, exulting and calling out to me to see "the cooking places." Many parts had the geological features of the Sahel, or hilly country in the neighbourhood of the city of Algiers. The air was pure and cool. But though it was calm this day and the evening, a sudden tempest got up after midnight. I was lying on the bare ground rolled in a blanket, when the wind tore it from off me, and I was obliged to retreat to a hovel. I am told these tempests are frequent in The Mountains, no doubt arising from the intense heat rarefying the air. _9th._--Slept the greater part of this day to recover from the fatigue of the preceding days. Do not suffer much, and am surprised I do not suffer more. Asked Mohammed for the quarter of sheep purchased at Yefran, and taxed him with stealing it: told him I would give him no backsheesh on arriving at Ghadames. He had stolen the meat to make a feast for his friends on his arrival, and afterwards brought me a piece of my own meat cooked as his own, but which I refused. This is a fine illustration of being generous at another person's expense. In the evening went to see Rujban. There are seven villages forming the district of Rujban. These consist of so many mud and stone buildings, but some of the houses are excavations out of the solid rock, the principal object being protection from the fiery summer heat, and the intense winter cold. Many of the houses have a yard before them, which is walled round, and three or four are mostly clustered together. Sometimes excavations are made in a pit or hollow found on high ground, and then a subterraneous passage leading to them is excavated from the mountain sides: these are reckoned very secure. From the heights where I write, there is a boundless view of the plain and undulating ground which lie between the Mediterranean and this Atlas chain. The Arabs call it their sea, and it certainly looks like a sea from these heights. A marabout sanctuary and garden at the base of the mountains, is called their port. There is frequently a freshness rising from the subjected plain like that of the sea. The camels, they say, are their ships. There are besides some pretty views in and over the Atlas valleys, where you overlook the small scattered oasisian spots of cultivation, with here and there a palm and little groups of inclosed fig-trees. Then again, there are heights crowned with olive-woods, as if The Mountains had put on a black scull-cap. Some of the precipices are so profound, as to deserve the epithet of "horrid." In different parts of these heights are flights of natural steps, by which they are ascended, and which seem to have received some finish from Arabian ingenuity.