306 
TRAVELS IN NORTHERN AFRICA. 
CHAP. VIII. 
Benioleed. The Negresses had, from the tune of our setting off, 
been collecting wood, and the poor creatures were each laden with 
stock for two days. We passed a grave, which was ornamented by 
an inverted gourd at the head. The person buried there was a 
drunken man, a native of Sockna, who had been in the habit of 
carrying letters or orders across the desert, whenever the Sultan 
required it, and was able to pass it on foot in three days, at about 
forty miles a day. It once happened that a letter was to be brought 
from Sockna to Zeghen, and this man was selected for the purpose ; 
he was drunk at the time, yet insisted on having his gourd full of 
Lackbi, instead of carrying, as usual, a small skin of water at his 
back, promising, however, to drink enough at Gutfa, a well at 
the foot of the mountains. He set out in this condition, and was 
found dead with his empty gourd by his side, within an hour's walk 
of the well we had left, and so finished his task ; he was accord- 
ingly buried here, as a warning to all topers. 
At 12. 6. P. M. came to the sand, and passed over it until 1. 30. 
when we reached very steep, irregular sand hills, which we found great 
difficulty in ascending, the camels falling repeatedly. Having cleared 
these hills, we ascended a plain by a pass called Kenaire jJ^a, to the 
eastward of which, at the distance of a mile, is the turret I have 
already mentioned. Through the sand hills, I observed a singular 
line of rocks, resembhng the scoria of the lava of Vesuvius, and about 
ten feet in breadth, running north and south for about five hundred 
yards. The mountains over Om el Abeed, which we had just left, 
run east and west, until lost in the distance. The hiUs we ascended 
were of hmestone and flint, very precipitous, and facing to the 
southward, running east-south-east and west-north- west. The plain 
was covered with a white crust or clay, with here and there bare 
rock intervening. 
At 3. 40. P. M. we passed over a few sand hills, called El 
