Owing To The Want Of Wood, No Coffins Are Used.

The bodies are merely wrapped in a mat, or linen cloth, and covered with palm branches, over which the earth is thrown.

When the branches decay, the earth falls in, and the graves are easily known by being concave, instead of convex. The place where the former sultans were buried, is a plain near the town; their graves are only distinguished from those of other people, by having a larger proportion of broken pots scattered about them. It is a custom for the relations of the deceased to visit, and occasionally to recite a prayer over the grave, or to repeat a verse of the Koran. Children never pass within sight of the tombs of their parents, without stopping to pay this grateful tribute of respect to their memory. Animals are never buried, but thrown on mounds outside the walls, and there left. The excessive heat soon dries up all their moisture, and prevents their becoming offensive; the hair remains on them, so that they appear like preserved skins.

The men of Mourzouk of the better sort, dress nearly like the people of Tripoli. The lower orders wear a large shirt of white or blue cotton, with long loose sleeves, trousers of the same, and sandals of camel's hide. The shirts being long, many wear no other covering. When leaving their houses, and walking to the market or gardens, a jereed or aba is thrown round them, and a red cap, or a neatly quilted cotton white one, completes the dress. On Fridays, they perhaps add a turban, and appear in yellow slippers. In the gardens, men and women wear large broad-brimmed straw hats, to defend their eyes from the sun, and sandals made from the leaves and fibres of the palm trees. Very young children go entirely naked, those who are older have a shirt, many are quite bare-headed, and in that state exposed all day to the sun and flies. The men have but little beard, which they keep closely clipped. The dress of the women here, differs materially from that of the moorish females, and their appearance and smell are far from agreeable. They plait their hair in thick bobbins, which hang over their foreheads, nearly as low down as the eye-brows, and are there joined at the bottom, as far round to each side as the temples. The hair is so profusely covered with oil, that it drops down over the face and clothes. This is dried up, by sprinkling it with plenty of a preparation made of a plant resembling wild lavender, cloves, and one or two more species pounded into powder, and called atria; it forms a brown dirty-looking paste, and combined with perspiration and the flying sand, becomes in a few days far from savoury. The back hair is less disgusting, as it is plaited into a long tress on each side, and is brought to hang over the shoulders; from these tresses, ornaments of silver or of coral are suspended. Black wool is frequently worked in with their black locks, to make them appear longer.

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