Began to practise my quackery very early, and administered solution for the eye in various parts of the streets _pro bono publico_. The Rais sent for me likewise, and I poured a few drops of caustic into his eyes. In fact, I was full of business, although but a few hours in the town, and hardly had time to look about me. This business after such a journey! My turjeman, Bel-Kasem, also took me into his garden, and gave me a supply of onions, peppers, and dates. The gardens appeared quite equal to those of Tripoli. The turjeman was soon useful, though he only spoke a few words of Italian, but chiefly because he had less prejudices against the Christians than his fellow-townsmen. He had worked in the house of a French merchant in Tunis many years, and always retained a sort of sneaking kindness for Frenchmen, which indeed was much to his credit. In walking about the town, I was followed by groups of children and black women, all running one over another to see me. My turjeman was obliged to beat them to keep them off. I am the _second_ Christian who has visited Ghadames; the first being the unfortunate Major Laing, who never returned to record what he saw in this city! But his residence of a few days here is forgotten by nearly all the present generation. The Rais is the only Turk. All the troops are Arabs. The Ghadamsee people are never soldiers. This evening the Rais sent me supper, much the same as the dinner. The people of the ghafalah (the Arab strangers), went to pray this evening in the mosque set apart for strangers. I must not omit the mention of the strict and scrupulous exactitude with which all the ghafalah prayed _en route_. Five times a day is prescribed by the Koran. Most of them prayed the five times, but not altogether, some choosing their own time, a liberty allowed to travellers. It was a refreshing, though at the same time a saddening sight, to see the poor Arab camel-drivers pray so devoutly, laying their naked foreheads upon the sharp stones and sand of The Desert--people who had literally so few of the bounties of Providence, many of them scarcely any thing to eat--and yet these travel-worn, famished men supplicated the Eternal God with great and earnest devotion! What a lesson for the fat, overfed Christian! And shall we say, that because these men are Mohammedans, _therefore_ the portals of heaven are hermetically sealed against the rising incense of their Desert prayers? . . . It is hard to think so . . . though some think so.