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Then Saheer El-Maharee, and then a long stream, in which are reeds. Afterwards you find Hinsheer El-Basasah. Thence you come to Emjessem. All this route is Sahara; and the road from Seenawan to Emjessen is two days' journey. After this you find the small mountains Baârbeeah Aghour. Then you find Ghadames. There is a day's journey from Emjessen to Ghadames." 28th.

Heard all the Arab soldiers have run away from Emjessen, being without anything to eat. These wise Turkish commanders gave the poor fellows a bag of barley and a little oil, and left it, like the widow's cruse in Holy Writ, to replenish itself. The Shânbah may now go and drink the water of the well, and plunder the caravans as they please.

From Tripoli to The Mountains 3 days. " The Mountains to Seenawan 3 " " Seenawan to Ghadames 3 " The French geographers, for some reason, have made Ghadames situate upon a salt plain, confounding its site with the salt plain of Emjessen. There is no salt plain in the suburbs of Ghadames, or the country near.

Like the Sibhah of Emjessen, and "The Lake of Marks," in Tunis, the saline particles are often combined with earths or sand so closely as to form a substance resembling stone, and equally hard to break or cut through. With this salt stone houses are built.

24th. Emjessen. Arrived at these wells about 10 A.M. Earlier we had passed a place where they were trying to get water. Emjessen is a vast salt plain, which is covered over in different parts with a coating of salt, hard enough and thick enough to furnish materials for building. The water is, of course, brackish, but nevertheless the camels drank it with eagerness.

Emjessen is situate about ten hours from Ghadames, say, a short day's journey. The Sahara all around now showed still more marked features of sterility, of unconquerable barrenness. Here too, for the first time, I saw boundless ridges and groups of sand stretching far away to the south-west, but they were low squatting heaps. Some sand-hills we had crossed for an hour or two.

He says of present matters, "The people pay 6,000 mahboubs per annum; it is too small a sum for a city of merchants; there is little money in the country, it being mostly deposited in the hands of merchants in Tripoli; he wishes Christians established here, and a regular souk, or market, opened; the number of Arab troops which he has here is 120; he is building barracks and a fondouk at Emjessen, in order to station troops there to guard the wells, for the banditti come there and drink water, and then lie in ambush to plunder caravans."