" Are you well ? how are your friends ? How are all the people of the
west ? How is our Lord Muley Abderrhaman ? " The last question is a
compliment that an Arab of the western part of the desert seldom fails
to pay to the emperor of Morocco. A compliment which he can well
afford to pay, inasmuch as he never pays any thing else.
Our greetings over. Sheikh Ali ben Hammadow conducted me to the
douah, where I was introduced to his sons, and half a dozen other men,
by the name of Ishmael El Drebbah, or Ishmael the marksman. My story
was soon told. I represented that I belonged to the Beni Zebis, a tribe of
Mongearts, in the neighborhood of Cape Bojador, and that I was almost
the only one living of my immediate family, which had been nearly extir-



KALOOLAH.
207



pated in a death feud with a family of the Beni Zosh. That recently I
had taken signal vengeance for the death of my relatives, by murdering
my chief enemy, with two of his wives and three of his children, besides
killing several camels and maiming a slave belonging to his brother, and
firing several stacks of barley the property of his cousin ; and that to
avoid the fury of his friends, I had taken my heirie and fled.
