TRIPOLY TO BENGAZI.

89 tents in a garden near the town, and proceeded to make the necessary arrangements. The town of Mesurata is built with tolerable regularity ; its streets cross each other at right angles, and near the centre stands the market-place, which, like most others in this country, is half occupied by a pool of green and stinking water. The houses are only one story high, and are built with rough stones and mud; the roofs are flat, and formed with slight rafters, covered with mats and a quantity of sea-weed, over which is laid a thick coat of mud, smoothed and beat down very carefully. They are fortunate who can mix a little lime with the mud which forms the outer part of their roof ; for without this addition it is wholly incapable of resisting the heavy rains which assail it in winter, and a thick muddy stream never fails to find its way, through the numerous mazes of sea-weed and matting, to the luckless inhabitants below : the white- washed walls are in consequence usually marked with long streaks of this penetrating fluid, and present a singularly-variegated appearance. The greater part of the town has been built upon a hard rocky incrustation, about two feet in thickness ; the soil beneath is soft and sandy, and, being easily removed, is excavated by the Arabs into storehouses for their corn and dry provisions. Some of these have in the course of time fallen in, and the streets are in such places not very passable.

The extent of the district of Mesurata, according to the report of its Shekh, is from Selin to Sooleb, a place in the Syrtis, two days distant to the southward of the town; it consists of the villages of Ghara, Zouia, Zoroog, Gusser Hdmed, Gezir, c., and is said to N