CHAP. IV. 
MORZOUK. 
199 
Our friend Yussuf brought to me a very old man, who had been 
to Ashantee, and who gave some very extraordinary and rather 
improbable accounts of the people there. He said that there were 
white traders at the coast whom he had himself seen. This I would 
not at first beheve, until he related some distinct accounts of the 
habits of the people he met with, pecuUar to Europeans. 
In Morzouk there are sixteen Mosques, which are covered in, 
but some of them are very small ; each has an Imaum, but the Kadi 
is their head, of which dignity he seems not a httle proud. This 
man had never been beyond the boundaries of Fezzan, and coidd 
form no idea of any thing superior to mud houses and palms ; he 
always fancied us great romancers when we told him of our country, 
and described it as being in the middle of the sea. 
It may be necessary before I take leave of Morzouk, and indeed 
of Tripoli, to explain that our adoption of the Moorish costume 
was by no means a sufficient safeguard in either of those places, or 
in traversing the interior of Africa ; for though it might, to a casual 
observer, bhnd suspicion, yet when we had occasion to remain for a 
time at any place, or to perform journeys in company with strangers, 
we found that it was absolutely requisite to conform to all the 
duties of the Mohammedan religion, as well as to assume their 
dress. To this precaution I attribute our having met with so little 
hindrance in our proceedings ; for had we openly professed ourselves 
Christians, we might, in Fezzan, have experienced many serious 
interruptions ; whilst farther in the interior, even our lives would 
have been in continual jeopardy. The circumstance of our having 
come from a Christian country, which we always acknowledged, 
frequently rendered us hable to suspicion ; but by attending con- 
stantly at the estabhshed prayers, and occasionally acknowledging 
the divine mission of Mohammed, or, more properly, by repeating 
