51 
amongst the Arabs of the Great African Desert. 
winding path (which tended southward,) until about 3 o’clock 
in the afternoon ; when they arrived at a valley between two 
high mountains, the sides of which produced large oil trees. The 
branches of this tree resemble an oak, and produce green 
plums f with a hard shell and a kernel in each, which, when 
boiled, affords oil The process for obtaining this oil is as fol- 
lows : The nuts are broken, the kernels dried in the sun, then 
ground, and boiled with water in clay-pots ; the oil is skimmed 
off as it rises. 
The valley is about three quarters of a mile across, there was 
no grass in it ; but small bushes grew in a clayey soil, mixed 
with a black slaty stone. 
Here stood a solitary building, about the size, and shape of 
an English barn, or haystack.” The lower part was formed of 
rough red rockstones, bedded in clay ; the upper of canes and 
boughs of trees : the whole was covered with rushes. It appear- 
ed as if it had been long built, being quite black with, moss on 
the outside. One end of this building was to the north, and the 
other to the south. In the south end was a square headed 
door, which was not opened while Scott was there. There was 
no window, nor any thing like a chimney, or other projection, 
except a long pole forked at the end, rising out of the rushes 
on the east side of the roof, and sloping upwards. It was so 
long that the forked ends were beyond the line of the wall, and 
each extremity was covered by an ostrich egg. Immediately 
below these was a large wooden bowl capable of holding five or 
six gallons, and placed on three large stones, which supported it 
about two feet from the ground. This building they told him 
was the grave of Sidna Mahommed. This, he says, does not 
mean the grave of the Prophet^ whose title among them is Uhrr 
soel -f*, but of some great man connected with, or a relation of 
• This is no bad description of the Shea-Tree. See Park’s First Journey. 
*}• Before receiving this account of the grave, he had been told that it was the 
burial place of the Prophet Mahommed, (as he supposes, with the intention of 
more readily inducing him to change his religion,) but haring read when at home, 
in some book respecting the East Indies, that Mahommed’s burial place was 
Mecca, which is a large town, and that his coffin was hung up in a large church ; 
he therefore knew that this story could not be true. After his return to El Ghib- 
lah, he was told that another great man called Sidna Ali, was buried in the build- 
I) 2 
