318 
TRAVELS IN NORTHERN AFRICA. CHAP. vill. 
description given of them, must be curious. I despatched a man to 
catch me some, promising him a dollar if he brought four. One 
sort is black, and burrows in the ground ; the other yellow, with a 
white belly and red eyes, and lives principally amongst the boughs 
of the palm trees. 
Tuesday, Feb. 29th. — A man arrived from my friend, the Shreef 
Sadig, bringing two letters, one from himself, and the other from 
his brother the Shreef Abd el Ateef These letters contained many 
kind wishes that I might succeed in all my undertakings, and 
return to their country ; and concluded by saying, that prayers had 
been offered up in their Mosque for my safety. Four ostrich eggs, 
and two skins of pecuUarly fine dates, accompanied these kind 
epistles. 
Never was I so much out of patience with any people as with 
the natives of this place ; night and day my door was surrounded, 
not by the poor alone, but by high and low. I really envied poor 
Behbrd his deafness, for had I too lost my hearing, I might have 
enjoyed a httle peace. If any of these people obtained admittance, 
they sat down, and could not be induced to move for an hour or two, 
all the time flattering and begging. Ill as I was, these tormentors 
never allowed me to close my eyes. Belford, besides being deaf, un- 
derstood but httle Arabic, and could not assist me in keeping them 
off ; consequently I was continually obliged to answer questions, to 
admit some, and to turn out others, and was thereby thrown into a 
fever far more severe than that which at first attacked me. The 
flies hterally covered the walls, and fell by spoonfuls into all we eat 
or drank ; in fact, so many evils overwhelmed me at once, that I 
have ample reason to recollect Sockna, and the miseries I endured 
there are too strongly imprinted on my mind to be ever forgotten. 
I managed, in spite of my weakness, the foregoing night, to go out 
