eneral 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 vie