The marabouts[21] do not usually inhabit the same camp with the hassanes; four of them only were to be found in that of Hamet-Dou. One of these was very poor; he was a schoolmaster, taught girls and boys, and when their education was completed the parents presented him with a coussabe or a bullock. Evening and morning the children are engaged in picking up fire-wood; it is always after dark at night, and before it is light in the morning that they take their lesson. By the light of a great fire, they recite some verses of the Koran, chanting them in a loud tone; these verses the master writes upon their boards and they have to learn them by heart. At night they meet again at the master’s tent to repeat their lesson. Whilst he is hearing his class, the master walks round the fire, singing himself to give the note to his scholars, and holding in his hand a long stick, with which he lays about him, when he sees any one inattentive. When a pupil is perfect in his lesson, he goes all round the camp repeating it, and obtains great applause. The Moors have a profound reverence for the Koran; they never lay it on the ground, not even on a mat, without putting a pagne under it. Before they venture to touch it they perform an ablution, raising their hands above their heads first, and then rubbing them over their faces and arms; any one who should do otherwise, would be despised and considered as an infidel. The boys are not admitted into the schools till they have been circumcised, and before this epoch they are forbidden to touch the holy book. The slaves are never allowed to handle it, being regarded as impure. When the boards, on which the Koran has been written, are removed, they must be taken by the cord which serves to hang them up by, and neither be turned wrong end upwards nor trailed on the ground. When school is over, these boards are laid upon the thorn fence, and a slave who should presume to meddle with them would be beaten without mercy. The education of the girls is very limited; they are taught to repeat the salam, and a few prayers, but seldom to write; some of them however are tolerably well informed. The boys learn the Koran by heart; but it is to the education of the marabouts that most attention is paid; some of them are very well read in the precepts of their religion, and pretend to know more than we do of sacred history. They were quite surprised that I should know any thing of the Bible, and I gained great applause by reciting some of the adventures in the lives of the patriarchs; but they were still more astonished that I was acquainted with the history of Mahomet, and this gained me their good-will more than any thing else.