They Had Many Opportunities Of Observing The Fighi And Their Scholars Sitting On The Sand.

The children are taught their letters by having them written on a flat board, of a hard wood, brought from Bornou and Soudan, and repeating them after their master.

When quite perfect in their alphabet, they are allowed to trace over the letters already made, they then learn to copy sentences, and to write small words dictated to them. The master often repeats verses from the Koran, in a loud voice, which the boys learn by saying them after him, and when they begin to read a little, he sings aloud, and all the scholars follow him from their books, as fast as they can. Practice at length renders them perfect, and in three or four years their education is considered complete. Thus it is, that many who can read the Koran with great rapidity, cannot peruse a line of any other book. Arithmetic is wholly put of the question. On breaking up for the day, the master and all the scholars recite a prayer. The school-hours are by no means regular, being only when the fighi has nothing else to do. Morning early, or late in the evening, are the general times for study. The punishments are beating with a stick on the hands or feet and whipping, which is not unfrequently practised. Their pens are reeds - their rubber sand. While learning their tasks, and perhaps each boy has a different one, they all read aloud, so that the harmony of even a dozen boys may be easily imagined.

In the time of the native sultans, it was the custom, on a fixed day, annually, for the boys who had completed their education, to assemble on horseback, in as fine clothes as their friends could procure for them, on the sands to the westward of the town. On an eminence stood the fighi, bearing in his hand a little flag rolled on a staff; the boys were stationed at some distance, and on his unfurling the flag and planting it in the ground, all started at full speed. He who first arrived and seized it, was presented by the sultan with a fine suit of clothes, and some money, and rode through the town at the head of the others. These races ceased with the arrival of Mukni, and parents now complain that their sons have no inducement to study.

All the houses are infested with multitudes of small ants, which destroyed all the animals which the party had preserved, and even penetrated into their boxes. Their bite was very painful, and they were fond of coming into the blankets. One singularity is worthy of remark in Fezzan, which is, that fleas are unknown there, and those of the inhabitants, who have not been on the sea-coast, cannot imagine what they are like. Bugs are very numerous, and it is extraordinary that they are called by the same name as with us. There is a species of them which is found in the sands, where the coffles are in the habit of stopping; they bite very sharply, and fix in numbers round the coronet of a horse; the animals thus tormented, often become so outrageous as to break their tethers.

There are several pools of stagnant salt water in the town, which it is conceived in a great measure promote the advance of the summer fever and agues. The burying places are outside the walls, and are of considerable extent. In lieu of stones, small mud embankments are formed round the graves, which are ornamented with shreds of cloth tied to small sticks, with broken pots, and sometimes ostrich eggs. One of the burying places is for slaves, who are laid very little below the surface, and in some places the sand has been so carried away by the wind, as to expose their skeletons to view. 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.

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