Among our visitors was Haj Mohammed El-Saeedy, the owner of our camels.
His social position answers to that of an English shipowner. He is a
marabout of great celebrity in this country, and moves about in an
atmosphere of respect. By the way, when it became clearly impressed upon
my mind that the Fezzanee camel-drivers were merely employed for hire,
and had no property whatever in the beasts they drove, my opinion of
them began to rise. It would have been impossible to take more care of
the camels than they did.

We remained stationary in the Wady, from the 1st of May to the evening
of the 3d, when we moved on to Toueewah. After dark was passed Azerna,
in the neighbourhood of which stood the ancient town, celebrated for its
ruins. The modern place, though presenting a martial kind of appearance
with its battlemented mud walls, contained only ten inhabitants, who
live like so many rats in holes or under the piles of ruins. On the 4th,
when the people removed our beds in the morning, a scorpion sallied
furiously forth. We had been sleeping with him under our pillows. We
moved on, still in the Wady, for a couple of hours, until we came to the
house of the Kaïd, and once more encamped. His habitation is large,
commodious, and well protected from the sun. He showed us his
sleeping-apartment, which is airy and well protected from the sun. A
number of little wicker baskets, the handiwork of his wife, served as so
many clothes-presses. The baskets of Fezzan are perfectly water-tight.

This Kaïd, called Ahmed Tylmoud, is quite a character, and looks very
droll with his single eye. He has twenty soldiers only under his command
throughout the valley. The Turks do not waste their men, making up by
severity for want of numbers. Like the commandant of Shaty, this Ahmed
Tylmoud insisted on "playing at powder" with his men for our
edification; but was also obliged to beg his ammunition. It is singular,