It Is Of No Importance Whether The Girl Has An Appetite Or Not, The Kouskous And Milk Must Be Swallowed, And Obedience Is Frequently Enforced By Blows.

The usual dress of the women is a broad piece of cotton cloth wrapped round the middle, which hangs down like a petticoat; to the upper part of this are sewed two square pieces, one before and the other behind, which are fastened together over the shoulders.

The head dress is a bandage of cotton cloth, a part of which covers the face when they walk in the sun, but frequently, when they go abroad, they veil themselves from head to foot. Their employment varies according to their situation. Queen Fatima passed her time in conversing with visitors, performing devotions, or admiring her charms in a looking-glass. Other ladies of rank amuse themselves in similar idleness. The lower females attend to domestic duties. They are very vain and talkative, very capricious in their temper, and when angry vent their passion upon the female slaves, over whom they rule despotically.

The men's dress differs but little from that of the negroes, except that they all wear the turban, universally made of white cotton cloth. Those who have long beards display them with pride and satisfaction, as denoting an Arab ancestry. "If any one circumstance," says Mr. Park, "excited amongst the Moors favourable thoughts towards my own person, it was my beard, which was now grown to an enormous length, and was always beheld with approbation or envy. I believe, in my conscience, they thought it too good a beard for a Christian."

The great desert of Jarra bounds Ludamar on the north. This vast ocean of sand is almost destitute of inhabitants. A few miserable Arabs wander from one well to another, their flocks subsisting upon a scanty vegetation in a few insulated spots. In other places, where the supply of water and pasturage is more abundant, small parties of Moors have taken up their residence, where they live in independent poverty, secure from the government of Barbary. The greater part of the desert, however, is seldom visited, except where the caravans pursue their laborious and dangerous route. In other parts, the disconsolate wanderer, wherever he turns, sees nothing around him but a vast indeterminable expanse of sand and sky; a gloomy and barren void, where the eye finds no particular object to rest upon, and the mind is filled with painful apprehensions of perishing with thirst. Surrounded by this dreary solitude, the traveller sees the dead bodies of birds, that the violence of the wind has brought from happier regions; and as he ruminates on the fearful length of his remaining passage, listens with horror to the voice of the driving blast, the only sound that interrupts the awful repose of the desert.

The antelope and the ostrich are the only wild animals of these regions of desolation, but on the skirts of the desert are found lions, panthers, elephants, and wild boars.

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