CHAP. V. 
ZUELA. 
215 
square ; their diameters are about twenty feet, and their height about 
thirty. They have dome tops, and two windows ; one low near the 
ground, the other high and narrow, and situated about ten feet 
above it. The rough skeleton of the building is of sun-dried bricks 
and clay, which have hardened to nearly the consistency of stone ; 
over this, to about half the height of the building, are laid large flat 
stones of a reddish colour, and unhewn, as found in the neighbouring 
mountains. Few of these, however, still adhere. 
The interior of the buildings are perfectly void, and appear 
never to have had any floors or partitions. From the smaUness of 
the lower windows, it strikes me that these places were the tombs 
of the Shreefs, who first settled here about five or six hundred 
years ago ; at all events, they now answer this purpose, as each 
contains a Shreef, whose grave is ornamented with the usual com- 
plement of broken pots, shreds of cloth, and ostrich eggs. The 
people here look with much reverence on these edifices, and tell 
many wonderful stories of the dead now enshrined in them. 
On these tombs are the inscriptions about which so many ridi- 
culous tales are told ; but two only at present retain them, and these 
are on the point of falling. 
The Zuela people, like all other Moors, attribute strange 
buildings and writings to the Christians, so that some excuse may 
be offered for those who have circulated such pompous stories of 
Fezzan. 
The inscriptions are on the upper part of the walls, and on the 
sides instead of the front, which makes it very difficult to see them, 
owing to the neighbouring buildings not allowing sufficient space 
to walk back in order to distinguish them more clearly. The least 
perfect has only one or two lines, resembling the tops of letters, on 
a white cement of about a foot square ; the other has about two 
