The harness of the horses and camels hangs up round the tent. The king’s bed is after the same fashion as that of the negroes, consisting of a hurdle covered with mats, and raised by stakes and cross-bars about a foot from the ground. A mat spread on the ground covers the unoccupied part of the tent, and serves the king’s attendants for a bed. The common people lie on the ground on mats, under which they _sometimes_ spread a little straw. A matting is put round the goods at the end of the tent, to preserve them from thieves. The store of water is kept in skins upon stakes in the inside of the tents; it is reserved for the masters and the calves, and refused to the slaves; and even she who has had the trouble to fetch it cannot obtain a little but by dint of entreaties and after enduring all sorts of mortifications. The king’s table service consists of six or eight deep round wooden dishes, each containing about three quarts, and used to hold milk and other articles; three metal pots and two of earthen-ware, which they obtain from the Fouta, form the cooking apparatus, and complete the list of the furniture. This description will serve for all other tents as well as the king’s, except that the poorer class have mats instead of a carpet. Hamet-Dou is almost always surrounded by _guéhués_ or strolling singers, who abound among the Moors, and are always to be found in the train of the princes, from whom they obtain whatever they want, sometimes by threats, at others by the basest flattery. Every prince has one of these men in his retinue, and Hamet-Dou’s _guéhué_ follows him wherever he goes. When they are seated together in the tent, he sings the king’s praise, and loads him with such outrageous panegyric, that none but an African monarch could hear it without blushing; the king’s wife and children usually join and repeat in chorus all the absurdities he can invent. These parasites have contrived to make themselves as much feared as despised by the Moors; they understand the art of persuasion in perfection; and though they are noted impostors and consigned to everlasting fire by public opinion, their calumny is so ingenious that it always injures the character of those against whom it is aimed. The marabouts have the greatest contempt for the guéhués, but they always receive them politely when they make their appearance, for fear of the false reports which they would raise if they were offended. The instruments which the guéhués use to accompany their songs are of two kinds. One, in the form of a guitar, is nothing but an oval gourd, covered with a well dried sheep-skin; this is crossed horizontally by a stick a foot long, upon which the strings of the instrument, five in number, are fastened: these strings are made of twisted hair, and the tone of this instrument, which is touched by the hand, is pleasing enough. The second is a sort of harp with fourteen strings of sheep’s gut,