d to
reconcile myself, under present circumstances, to the accommodation
the country might afford. We started from Santa Cruz at sun-set;
travelling through Tamaract, to the river Beni Tamur. We continued
our journey till we arrived, at the dawn of day, at the foot of
immense high mountains, called Idiaugomoron. Here my companion and
guide L'Hage Muhamed bu Zurrawel, pointed out to me two castellated
houses, about two miles distant from each other; the
family-quarrels of these people had produced such animosity, that
the inhabitants of neither house could with safety go out, for fear
of being overpowered and killed by those of the other; so that
wherever they went, they were well armed, but dared not go far.
These two families were preparing for a siege, which often happens
in this province. Thus the inhabitants of one house attack another,
and sometimes exterminate or put to death the whole family, with
their retainers. The province of Haha was thus in a state of the
152 most lamentable civil war, originating from these family-quarrels
and domestic feuds. The heathen and anti-christian principle of
revenge and retaliation, is here pursued with such bitter and
obstinate animosity, that I have known instances of men
relinquishing their vocation, to go into a far country to revenge
the blood of a relation after a lapse of twenty years, and pursue
the object of his revenge, for some murder committed in his family,
perhaps forty or fifty years before.

To a British public, blessed with the benign influences of the
Christian doctrine, it is perhaps necessary that I should elucidate
this retaliative doctrine by an example:--Two men quarrel, and
fight; they draw their kumaeyas (curved daggers about 12 inches
long), which all the people of Haha wear, as well as all the clans
or kabyles of Shelluhs; and if one happens to give his antagonist a
_deadly_ wound, it becomes an indispensable duty in the next of kin
to the person killed or murdered, (though perhaps it can hardly be
termed a murder, as it is not committed, like an European duel, in
cold blood, but in the moment of irritation, and at a period when
the mind is under the influence of anger,) to seek his revenge by
watching an opportunity to kill the survivor in the contest. If the
former should die,