250 JOURNEY FROM fever, without their appearing to sustain any particular inconvenience, or to be more than usually exhausted at night*.

The habit of feeding horses only once a day is common in Africa under the most favourable circumstances. Their meal is after sunset, and before their corn is given them they are generally allowed to drink as much as they like. After this they get neither corn nor water till the same time on the following day. Some of the Arabs make a constant practice of obliging their horses to go two days without drinking, in order to accustom them to support with a better grace the privations they must occasionally be exposed to in the desert ; a mode of training which would probably have the same effect on our Enghsh horses as that which is said to have resulted from the well-known experiment of the Frenchman, who had just contrived to make his horse do without food, when he was unluckily prevented by the death of the animal from availing himself of so important an advantage.

A few weeks’ repose in a comfortable stable at Bengazi was, however, sufficient to restore most of our horses to their former strength and condition; and they afterwards carried us in very good style over the steep woody hills and rugged passes of the Cyrenaica.

From Carcora to Bengazi the country improves at every step, and we soon found ourselves surrounded by extensive crops of barley and abundance of excellent pasturage : this increase of produce was natu-* The horses, when we stopped, were ranged in a line along a thick cord, to which their fore legs were fastened ; and a smaller cord was passed from this to one of their hind legs, to prevent them from kicking one another.