CHAP. IV. MORZOUK. . 197 
Paradise the prophets are permitted by God to ride on animals of 
extraordinary beauty, called Borak, whose form is something like 
that of an antelope, and their swiftness such, that in the twinkling 
of an eye they can spring out of sight. All the prophets on the 
bare backs of these animals, but Allah, out of love for Sidina (our 
Lord) Mohammed, gave him a golden saddle, on which he parades^ 
before the faithful. Many more stories equally extraordinary are 
told and believed all over the country ; and in Morzouk are a few 
copies of some of the Arabian Nights' Entertainments, and the 
voyages of Sindebad the Sailor, which are as fully accredited as the 
Koran itself 
Yussuf generally amused me by singing, and ridicuhng the 
Arabs. The Tuarick were always subjects for his wit, and he related 
many curious anecdotes of them. One which, though greatly ex- 
aggerated, is much in character of these people, was of a man sent 
as a courier from Ghraat to Ghadams, eighteen days' journey, for 
which he received sufficient provision to support him the whole 
time, but which devouring at a meal, and girding his loins with a 
belt, he mounted his camel, and performed the journey without 
other sustenance ! These people, however, really can abstain from 
food for three or four days without any apparent inconvenience. 
On the 8th of December news arrived that the slave hunters 
had made but little booty, the people having been warned of their 
coming, and that they were on their return home. We also heard 
that the men of AVaday had cut the throats of eighty-two white 
traders in Wara, the capital, and had determined to suffer no 
Moors to trade again in their country, but to kill them immediately 
on their entering it. 
I now began a little to recover my health, and Belford, though 
still quite deaf, was without fever. 
