MAJOR LAING. 
83 
form the horrid deed, with which the Moor had refused to 
stain his hands. One of the murderers immediately tied his 
turban round the neck of the victim, and strangled him on 
the spot, he pulling one end while his comrade held the 
other. The corpse of the unfortunate Laing was cast upon 
the desert, to become the prey of the raven and the vulture, 
the only birds which inhabit those desolate regions. 
When the major had once been discovered to be a chris- 
tian and a European, death was a thousand times preferable 
to even a temporary change of religion, since he must have 
renounced all hope of again visiting Europe. The fate of 
Laing, had he become a Musulman perforce, would have 
been irremediably wretched. He would have been the slave 
of merciless barbarians, and exposed to all the miseries and 
dangers peculiar to that country ; in vain would the pacha 
of Tripoli have demauded his liberation. At that immense 
distance, the chief of the Zawats would have scorned his 
menaces and detained his prisoner. The resolution of Major 
Laing was perhaps at once a proof of intrepidity and of 
foresight. 
On his departure for El-Arawan the major took with him 
some astronomical instruments and his papers, but very little 
merchandise, for the Tooariks had relieved him of nearly all 
he possessed. The Sheikh Hamet therefore gained little 
by the murder of the English traveller, and he was even 
obliged to divide that little with the wretches whom he had 
made the instruments of his crime. A Moor of Tafilet, who 
belonged to the caravan, had for his share of the spoil a sex- 
tant, which I was informed might be found in the country. 
As for the major's papers and journals, they were scattered 
among the inhabitants of the desert. During my stay at 
Gourland, a village of Tafilet, I saw a copper pocket compass, 
of English manufacture. Nobody could tell me whence this 
instrument had come, and 1 concluded that it had belonged 
