The Oasis of Fezzan--Population--Ten Districts--Their Denomination and
Condition--Sockna--Honn--Worm of the Natron Lakes--Zoueelah--Mixed
Race--Improvements in Mourzuk--Heavy Ottoman Yoke--Results of the
Census--Amount of Revenue--Military Force--Arab Cavaliers--Barracks--Method
of Recruiting--Turkish System superior to French--Razzias--Population of
Mourzuk--Annual Market--Articles of Traffic--Acting-Governor and his
Coadjutors--Story of a faithless Woman--Transit Duties in Fezzan--Slave
Trade--Sulphur in the Syrtis--Proposed Colony from Malta.


The Pashalic of Fezzan, although it occupies a considerable space upon
the map--advancing like a peninsula from the line of Barbary countries
into the Sahara--is in reality a very insignificant province. From all
that I can learn, its entire population does not exceed twenty-six
thousand souls, scattered about in little oases over a vast extent of
country. It is, in fact, a portion of the Sahara, in which fertile
valleys occur a little more frequently than in the other portions.
Immense deserts, sometimes perfectly arid, but at others slightly
sprinkled with herbage, separate these valleys; and are periodically
traversed by caravans, great and small, which in the course of time have
covered the country with a perfect network of tracks.

Fezzan is divided into ten districts, of which the principal is
El-Hofrah, containing the capital, Mourzuk, and several smaller towns.
It is here and there besprinkled with beautiful gardens, in which are
cultivated, besides the date-palm, several of the choicest fruits that
grow on the coast--as figs, grapes, peaches, pomegranates, and melons.
In these gardens, as in most of the oases of the desert, the fruit trees
that require most protection from the sun are planted between the palms,
which make a kind of roof with their long leaves. Abd-el-Galeel