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. Of domestic animals the
camel alone can endure the fatigue of crossing it: by the
conformation of his stomach, he can carry a supply of water for ten
or twelve days; his broad and yielding foot is well adapted for
treading the sand; his flesh is preferr