The Houses Are Very Neatly Built, And The Rooms Are Washed With A Yellow Mud, Which Has A Pretty Effect.

Three tolerably built white-washed minarets, the first that had been seen since leaving Tripoli, rose to some height above the houses, and have a pleasing appearance.

Palm trees encircle the town, and the gardens are considered good. This town, as well as Zeighan, is famed for the number and sanctity of its marabouts. A stage of twenty miles, over a barren plain of gravel, leads to another, but inconsiderable town, called Timen-hint. On the next day but one, they reached Sebha, a mud-walled town, picturesquely situated on rising ground, surrounded with its palm groves, in the midst of a dreary, desert plain; it has a high, square, white-washed minaret to its principal mosque. At this place, Captain Lyon remarked a change of colour in the population, the people being mulattoes. Two marches more led to Ghroodwa, a miserable collection of mud huts, containing about fifty people, who appeared a ragged drunken set, as the immense number of tapped palms testified. From the ruins of some large mud edifices, this place seems once to have been of more importance. The palms, which extend for ten or fifteen miles, east and west, are the property of the sultan, and appeared in worse condition than any they had seen. On leaving this place, the route again entered on a barren, stony plain, and in five hours and a half passed a small wady, called Wad el Nimmel (the valley of ants), from the number of ants, of a beautiful pink colour, that are found there.

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