to place on the backs of mules, stopping and dismounting their houses wherever they met with pasture for their flocks. During the warm months, however, they erected huts of larger dimensions, roofing them with green boughs, and provender for their cattle being plentiful, remained stationary. To defend their flocks and herds from the cold, which is there always severe during the night, they kindled immense fires close to their doors, which, emitting too great a flame when fanned by tempestuous winds, sometimes caught their combustible dwellings, and endangered the lives both of themselves and their cattle. They were likewise exposed to the daily hazard of being devoured by lions or wolves, animals which abound in that savage region.
From hence he proceeded to Mount Dedas, a lofty chain eighty miles in length, covered with vast forests, and fertilized by a prodigious number of fountains and rivulets. On the summit of this ridge were then found the ruins of a very ancient city, on the white walls and solitary monuments of which there existed numerous inscriptions, but couched in a language and characters totally unknown to the inhabitants, some of whom supposed it to have been built by the Romans, though no mention of the place occurs in any African historian. The wretched race then inhabiting the mountain dwelt in caverns, or in huts of stones rudely piled upon each other. Their whole riches consisted in large droves of asses and flocks of goats; barley bread with a little salt and milk was their only food; and scarcely the half of their bodies were covered by their miserable garments. Yet the caverns in which they and their goats lay down promiscuously abounded in nitre, which in any civilized country would have sufficed to raise them to a state of opulence. The manners of these troglodytes were execrable. Living without hope and without God in the world, they fearlessly perpetrated all manner of crimes, treachery,
