82 AFRICAN WANDERINGS.

young man, and told him, in the plainest language, he would have the money, or it would go very ill with him (Hassan), as he knew well where this was to be found, and if he did not produce it, he would sell him and all his family to indemnify himself for the great loss. Such is Turkish justice — and enough of it.

• A few days ago the Pascha issued orders that all fires in the camp should be extinguished at evening's gun-fire, — a most wise 'and proper order, as the carelessness, and want of caution of the •soldiery was now doubly dangerous, the huts having become much more inflammable, from the straw they are formed of being thoroughly dried ; and at length it was found proper to collect aU the 'supply of powder into one hut, dig round it a wet ditch, and surround all by a wooden fence, near which all fires were strictly forbidden. But now again there burns, not fifteen paces from this fence, one of the largest fires; nor is much watch kept over it, even in the windiest days, and of an evening, one sees fires in the camp as numerous and late as ever. So it is ever with the Turks. An order is issued, and no sooner is it so than it is forgotten, nor is it recalled to mind till some smart bastinadoing in consequence of some misfortune caused by the breach of it, thus forcibly awakens the memory.

Carelessness and dependence on a merciful Providence are here equal, and go hand-in-hand. When on the Nile, we often fell in with vessels loaded with dried straw, and heaped so that the crew had barely room to work them, but this did not by any means prevent a roaring fire from being kept up between the piles of straw for cooking, and other purposes.

P>ery day the soldiers bring to myself and brother numbers of dead snakes, but, unfortunately, so mangled as to be useless as pecimens ; the soldiery not fancying we merely want the skins.

but believing our wish to be the flesh to prepare medicines from. Some of the men have confidently assured us, that, in a thicket, they came on a snake some twenty-feet long, and as thick as ft man's thigh. A kind of boa, probably; pity they could not kill him. The great number of snakes hereabouts, almost all very venomous, make our living in the open air and on the ground very unsafe, and it is by no means a matter of indifference here under what bush, or among what long-grass one sits down: a loose' stalk touched, or the bite of an insect, immediatelycalls up one's fears