The caravan was soon lost to view as it wound along the track by which we had come.  This day was exceedingly hot, whereas the previous days had reminded us of a cool summer in England.  The nights have hitherto been clear, and the zodiacal light is always brilliant.  Our blacks keep up pretty well.  There are now nine of them; five men, three women, and a boy.  They eat barley-meal and oil, and now and then get a cup of coffee.  I also feed the Fezzanee marabout, besides those specially attached to the expedition.  As to the camel-drivers, they are an ill-bred, disobliging set, and I give them nothing extra.  How different are our negroes!  They are most cheerful.  As we proceed, they run hither and thither collecting edible herbs; and, like children, making the way more long in their sport.  Sometimes their amusements are less pleasant, and they seem systematically to take refuge from ennui, in a quarrel.  Two of them began to pelt each other with stones to-day; allies dropped in on either side; laughter was succeeded by execrations; and the whole caravan at length came to loggerheads.

The sidr, or lote-tree, is abundant in these parts, and it is curious to notice how in the spring season the green leaves sprout out all over the white burnt-up shrub.  All vegetation in the desert that is not perfectly new seems utterly withered by time.  There is scarcely any medium between the bud and the dead leaf.  Infancy is scorched at once into old age.

As we advanced, the country appeared to put on sterner forms, until suddenly, in the afternoon, the rocks opened to disclose the Wady Esh-Shrab nestling amidst limestone hills, and containing the pleasant oasis of Mizdah.  Its beauties consist, in reality, but of a few patches of green barley and scanty palm-groves; but, in contrast to the sultry desert, the scene appeared really enchanting.

We have now left the Troglodytes behind us.  Mizdah (eight summer and ten winter days from Ghadamez, three short days from Gharian, and the same from Benioleed) is built above-ground, and consists of a double village, or rather two contiguous villages, inhabited by people of the Arab race.  Each division is fortified after a fashion, with walls now crumbling, and with round crenulated towers.  One large tower, some fifty feet high, has stood, they say, four hundred years.  I asked, What was the use of these fortifications? and was naively told they were for the purposes of shamatah, “war,” or rather “rows.”  And true enough, before the Turks extended their power so far, these two beggarly villages, fifty miles from any neighbours, were in constant hostility one with the other.  Each had its great tower, a giant among all the little towers—­a kind of keep, to which the defeated party retired to recruit its strength or escape utter destruction.  This is likewise the case with many other double towns of the Sahara, and seems to prove that war is the native passion and trade of man.  At any rate, punishment for such turbulence has not been wanting; for in this, as in so many other cases, whilst these poor wretches were engaged in cutting one another’s throats, the conqueror has come and established his tyranny.  They are now paying the penalty of their love of shamatah in the shape of an impost of four hundred mahboubs per annum, and in numbers are reduced to about a hundred and thirty heads of families.