28 
TRAVELS IN NORTHERN AFRICA. 
CHAP. 1. 
one of his ancestors, and which then hved on Battus, though 
they have since become wanderers. My new acquaintance was 
elegantly armed, having an embroidered belt, silver scabbarded 
sword, and well mounted pistols. He had received a wound in his 
arm in the mountain wars (when his tribe resisted the Bashaw), 
and imagined this to be the cause of a cough which at times 
troubled him. He was not well pleased with our laughing at his 
way of accounting for his complaint. 
All the dogs here being white, the liver-coloured pointers which 
had followed us from the Consulate caused the women and children 
to fly on their approach, from the idea that they were wolves. 
There are many Jews living in these mountains, whose dwellings 
are much cleaner and better excavated than those of the Arabs, 
and are also neatly whitewashed. These people, as in Tripoli, 
are the only handicraftsmen, and seem here to be rather better, 
treated than elsewhere. 
It rained very hard this night, and was very cold ; but under 
shelter of our tent we kept ourselves warm and dry. From the 
village we had observed a mountain called Tekoot cijJl,, to bear 
south 23° west. 
Wednesday, February 10th. — At 7. 10. A. M. we left Beni abbas, 
and went on for the Castle of Gharian, or Gusser Turk ijJjAsj^. 
After having proceeded over the plain, and reached the moun- 
tains that rise from it, we climbed a steep peak, and making 
our way along a sharp ledge on its top, again ascended to the 
mountain of Tekoot, the principal of the range. From this 
point we took the bearings of the following remarkable objects : 
Beni abbas, north 33° east. Gusser Turk, south 35° west. A 
mountain called Meroobi, south 55° east, and another mountain, 
west 5' south, distant about twenty-five miles, inhabited at this 
time by a rebel tribe under a cliief called Kaleefa. Owing to the 
