carried off by spouts into some general reservoir, or is collected in
large earthern jars for the daily consumption of the house. By far
the greater number of houses are, however, unprovided with any
defence of this nature; and if the precaution of beating down the
mud which forms the terrace, sufficiently hard to make the water
run off, be not adopted at the commencement of the rains, it is more
than probable, that the whole of the building so neglected will disappear
before the season is over. As the religion and the laziness of an
Arab equally prompt him to depend more upon the interference of
Providence, than upon any exertions of his own, this precaution is
often neglected; and after having borne, with exemplary patience,
all the dirt and inconvenience occasioned by the passage of the rain
through the mud over his head, he is roused from his lethargy by
the screams of his wife and children, alarmed, or badly wounded by
the fall of the roof, or by some serious accident from a similar cause,
by which he is a sufferer himself. Many persons were severely
wounded at Bengazi in the winter during which we were confined
there ; and it is probable, that there are accidents in the town every
year, occasioned by similar neglect.
When a house falls, it is generally left in a state of rubbish and
ruin, and the survivors of the family remove to another spot without
troubling themselves further about i t : the consequence is, that the
streets are often nearly blocked up by mounds of this nature disposed
in various parts of them; which form in the winter-time heaps of
mud and mire, and, in the dry weather, scatter thick clouds of light
dust in the faces and eyes of the passengers.
As these masses of rubbish also serve at the same time as general
receptacles for the superfluities of the city, groups of half-famished
dogs and myriads of flies are invariably collected about them ; in
thè midst of which are seen lying very contentedly, or rolling about
for diversion, swarms of little naked children, regardless of either,
which one might almost fancy were actually produced by the fertilizing
qualities of these heaps of putrid matter, as the monsters of
old are asserted to have been from the slime and the mud of the
Nile. There isj however, nothing singular or peculiar to Bengazi
in the scene which we have just described ; for every Arab town and
village will be found, more or less, to present to us a similar spectacle.
Filth and dust, and swarms of insects of every description, must
inevitably be the consequences of this continued neglect ; and we
accordingly find that these several annoyances, together with the
scattered groups of lean dogs and naked children, form the principal
characteristics (in the estimation of their European visitors) of these
enviable places of abode. We say, in the opinion of the natives of
Europe, because an Arab or a Moor sees nothing remarkable in any
of the objects here alluded to, and would consider it a mark' of affectation
or effeminacy to be annoyed at any similar objects or inconveniences.
In addition to the nuisances already enumerated, the open
spaces in Bengazi are usually ornamented by pools of stagnant,
putrid water ; 1 and that which is *in the market-place is rendered
more particularly offensive, from the circumstance of its being the
common receptacle of the offal and blood of the animals which are