some curious story respecting it. A t last it arrived, and Mohammed having begged that the way might be cleared, walked up to me with great importance, and opening, his abba, set before me a goose, which waddled off with great dignity, hissing as it went; while I, to the great disappointment of the company, fell back and laughed immoderately. We rode out of the town to see the extraordinary ruins, so much spoken of by the commentators on Horneman’s travels, but which Horneman himself never saw or heard of, unless as two or three miserable mud edifices of the early Arabs. The one most esteemed by the Shreefs is an old Mosque, standing at about half a mile to the westward of the town. It is a large oblong building of evidently an early date, though certainly of Arab origin. The walls are built with a neatness now unpractised and unknown, of unbaked rough bricks, and strong binding clay. A t the north-west corner is the Mouaden (or minaret), much dilapidated, but still of a height sufficient to command an extensive view of the surrounding country. The length of the Meseed inside is 135 feet, and its breadth is 90, immense dimensions for an Arab building, which has no cross walls to support the roof It is quite open overhead, and nothing remains to give an idea of what it once was covered with. There are two niches for the Imaum; one is in a partition built partly across, near one end, for that purpose ;; the other is in the wall, and in the form of a pulpit, and I suppose has been used for the purpose of addressing the people when assembled on the plain below, a custom prevailing at Morzouk after Rhamadan, at Milood, and other feast days. . From this Mosque we went to a spot half a mile east of the town, to examine five buildings, the appearance of which was much more interesting. These are in a line with one another, and have a passage between them of three or four feet in breadth. They are square; their diameters are about twenty feet, and their height about thirty. They have dome tops, and two windows; one low near the ground, the other high and narrow, and. situated about ten feet above it. The rough skeleton of the building is of sun-dried bricks and clay, which have hardened to nearly the consistency of stone ; aver this, to about half the height of the building, are laid large flat stones of a reddish colour, and unhewn, as found in the neighbouring mountains. Few of these, however, still adhere. The interior of the buildings are perfectly void, and appear never to have had any floors or partitions. From the smallness of the lower windows, it strikes me that these places were the tombs of the Shreefs, who first settled here about five or six hundred years ago; at all events, they now answer this purpose, as each contains a Shreef, whose grave is ornamented with the usual complement of broken pots, shreds of cloth, and ostrich eggs. The people here look with much reverence on these edifices, and tell many wonderful stories of the dead now enshrined in them. On these tombs are the inscriptions about which so many ridiculous tales are told; but two only at present retain them, and these are on the point of falling. The Zuela people, like all other Moors, attribute strange buildings and writings to the Christians, so that some excuse may be offered for those who have circulated such pompous stories of Fezzan. The inscriptions are on the upper part o f the walls, and on the sides instead of the front, which makes it very difficult to see them, owing to the neighbouring buildings not allowing sufficient space to walk back in order to distinguish them more dearly,; The/least perfeqt has only one or two lines, resembling the tops of letters, on a white cement of about a foot square ; ,the other, has about two
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