On the 1st of June, at five in the morning, we prepared to continue our course to the north. Our water-bags were now dry, for we had supplied our last night’s sentinels with water. All the forenoon we were travelling over a barren soil, which was dreary to look at; it was composed of very hard sand, covered with much grey gravel, and small, flat, sharp-edged, black stones. I perceived, which was rather unusual, a number of small tracks of former caravans, and which the winds had not had the power to efface, because the soil is hard and stony. I shall here relate a conversation which passed in my presence between Sidi-Molut, a Trajacant Moor, and Sidi-Body, associates of Sidi-Aly, my guide, and some of my greatest tormentors; the conversation turned upon the number of slaves they supposed the Europeans to possess— just as they suppose that all the christians, of whom they know nothing but the names, are of one nation and subject to one chief. In this persuasion, Sidi-Molut related that the sultan of Morocco had made an agreement with the sultan of the christians for the exchange of prisoners of both sexes; and that, by this treaty, a christian was to be exchanged for ten Musulmans, or a thousand piastres. The moment Body heard that the price of a christian slave was fixed at this sum, he interrupted Sidi-Molut, and said: “Well, we must sell Sidi-Abdallahi,” pointing at me with his finger. The other replied that I was not a christian but a Musulman, and that a Musulman was worth all the gold in the world. I could not refrain from darting a look of contempt at Body; and I even told him I saw plainly, that if he could he would sell me, the sooner the better, without any respect for his religion. He did not seem to pay attention to what I said; but Molut looked at me with a smile and said: “Body is a rogue, is not he Abdallahi?” The soil over which we travelled in the afternoon was covered with hills of loose yellow sand; we saw some vegetables, but at long intervals; the heat was excessive, and again increased the pangs of thirst. At last, about two in the afternoon, we halted near the wells of Trasas or Trarzas, situated in a plain surrounded by hills of yellow sand. These wells, which are numerous, are seven or eight feet deep; the water is salt and most disagreeable.