by telling tales that are both entertaining and interactive: he reads or rehearse chapters from the koran or some other book written on skins; when the board is full of writing, they rub it off with sand, and begin again. The board on which they write are many of them been so long in use that they are sometimes split in many places, and are spliced by small iron plates on each side; these plates as well as many of their rude instruments made of iron, are made by smiths, of which each tribe has two or three; they are very ingenious, and did the country afford every requisite necessary for pursuing the business with profit, their manufacturers would undoubtedly be inferior to none in the world; they burn small wood into charcoal, which they carry them them on camels; a piece of iron, a foot square, serves them for an anvil; they make their fire in a small hole dug in the ground for that purpose, which is blown up by means of two skins ingeniously fixed; so that while one is filling with air they blow with the other —— with a board placed on each, they raise and depress them at pleasure; they manage by means of a few clumsy tools of their own manufacture to contract the saddles for themselves to ride on. Their forge is carried about with very little convenience.

The Arabs are in general Mahometans; some of them are pagans. This country was the birth place of Mahomet. He taught the necessity of believing in God, the existence of angels, the resurrection and future judgement, and the doctrine of absolute de-