272 ARCHITECTURE.

with wooden mallets. They excel in the art o£ making terras. The houses are all flat roofed, so as to resist the heaviest rains : the declivity of the terrasses is so imperceptible, that it is just sufficient to give the rains a tendency to the great conduit or pipe that leads to the mitfere underneath the house, which is underground, and has a terras bottom, impervious to the water. Here is collected water sufficient for the family or household during the year ; the lime that washes into the mitfere from the terrassed roof, purifies the water, and preserves it from worms and other insects. They have no ornaments in their mosques ; but the place where the Mufti or Fakeer reads prayers, is covered with mats or carpets ; the rest of the floor is bare, and the respective individuals prostrate themselves on the bare floor, or on an antelope's or Elhorreh '\ skin, or the skin of a lion or tiger, prepared in a superior manner by the tanners at MarocGO, the leather of which is made soft as silk, and white as snow.

The bodies of the dead are never laid in the mosques or near them, but are invariably carried out of the town, to some coba in the vicinity.

* For a description of this curious animal, see Jackson's Marocco, page 83, Chapter on Zoology.

A coba is a cubical building, about forty or fifty feet square, having a dome on the top, inhabited by a fakeer ; the ground adjacent to this building is consecrated for the dead, but is never inclosed. The living reverence the dead by never riding over these grounds; but travellers, in passing