ere the greater part of the year the air
is filled with hot particles of sand, is very unfavourable to the sight;
the dazzling whiteness of the whitewashed houses also greatly injures
the eyes. But the Moors pretend that lime-washing is necessary to the
preservation of the houses from the weather, as well as from filth of
all sorts. We think really it is useful, by preventing dirty people in
many cases from being eaten up by their own filth and vermin,
particularly the Jews, the Tunisian Jews being the dirtiest persons in
the Regency. The lime-wash is the grand _sanitary_ instrument in North
Africa.

There are little birds that frequent the houses, that might be called
Jereed sparrows, and which the Arabs name boo-habeeba, or "friend of my
father;" but their dress and language are very different, having reddish
breasts, being of a small size, and singing prettily. Shaw mentions them
under the name of the Capsa-sparrow, but he is quite wrong in making
them as large as the common house-sparrow. He adds: "It is all over of a
lark-colour, excepting the breast, which is somewhat lighter, and
shineth like that of a pigeon. The boo-habeeba has a note infinitely
preferable to that of the canary, or nightingale." He says that all
attempts to preserve them alive out of the districts of the Jereed have
failed. R. has brought several home from that country, which were alive
whilst I was in Tunis. There are also many at the Bardo in cages, that
live in this way as long as other birds.

Went to see the houses of the inhabitants: they were nearly all the
same, the furniture consisting of a burnouse-loom, a couple of
millstones, and a quantity of basins, plates, and dishes, hung upon the
walls for effect, seldom being used; there were also some skins of
grain. The beams across the rooms, which are very high, are hung with
onions, dates, and pomegranates; the houses are nearly all of one story.
Some of the women are pretty, with large long black eyes and lashes;
they colour the lower lid black, which does not add to their beauty,
though it shows the bewitching orb more fully and boldly. They were
exceedingly dirty and ragged, wearing, nevertheless, a profusion of
ear-rings, armlets, anclets, bracelets, and all sorts of _lets_, with a
thousand talismanic charms hanging from their necks upon their ample
bosoms, which latter, from the habit of not wearing stays, reach as low
down as their waists. They wrap up the children in swaddling-clo