Their noise did not disturb me, for I had slept a
good deal in the day.
I had done very little indeed but sleep and lie down. We felt the heat
severely at noon. A gust of hot wind nearly carried away our tent.
The Tuaricks use spoons, and do not eat with their hands like the Arabs
and Turks; but the latter pretend that the Tuaricks never wash their
hands at all, whilst they, before and after eating, always take this
precaution. In saluting, the Tuaricks do not spread out the fingers much
when they raise their hand, but present the palm and fingers
outstretched to you. One of these gentlemen, whom I call the noisy one,
has got a poor little slave-boy, about seven years of age, who works
like a man, and goes quite naked.
To-day I found a young scorpion in the canvass-case of my writing-desk;
he cocked his tail in a hostile attitude, as if daring any one to touch
him. In his tail seems to be all his power, and so of all the scorpion
host. Yesterday was taken a locust: this destructive insect is not bred
in the desert. In this bare and thirsty region there is nothing for the
young ones to eat, and the old ones likewise would soon perish in the
Sahara. They are bred in the cultivated fields near the desert, or in
the fertile lands of the coast, as in the neighbourhood of Mogador,
where millions of the young have been seen, like so many small green
buds of trees.
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