CAMEL-DRIVERS — AZERNA. 
73 
grimage to Mekka. The motions of all these desert 
magnates are circulated from mouth to mouth as assi- 
duously as those of our Mayfair fashionables. 
Among our visitors was Haj Mohammed El- 
Saeedy, the owner of our camels. His social posi- 
tion 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-driv^ers 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 reiuained stationary in the Wady, from the 1st 
of May to the evening of the 3d, when we moved 
on to Toiieew^ah. 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 bat- 
tlemented 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 re- 
moved 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 Kaid, and once more encamped. His habitation 
is large, commodious, and well protected from the 
sun. He showed us his sleeping-apartment, which 
