tiger, prepared in a superior manner by the
tanners at Marocco, the leather of which is made soft as silk, and
white as snow.

[Footnote 180: For a description of this curious animal, see
Jackson's Marocco, page 83, Chapter on Zoology.]

The bodies of the dead are never laid in the mosques or near them,
but are invariably carried out of the town, to some coba[181] in
273 the vicinity. The bodies of the dead are washed, and covered with
lawn, and placed on an oblong wooden machine, resembling a box
without a cover, called a _kiffen;_ it has four legs about six
inches long, to uphold it from the ground, and two horizontal
projections at each end, to place on the shoulders of four men,
generally the nearest relations of the deceased, who thus carry the
body to the grave, chaunting with the whole company, amounting
sometimes to some hundreds, _La Allah, ila Allah wa Muhamed Rassule
Allah_, "There is no God but God, and Muhamed is the prophet of
God." This repetition may appear extraordinary to the English
reader; but let it be observed that the Muhamedans never use the
pronoun for the name of the Omnipotent, but invariably the noun.
The body is taken out of the bier, and laid in the ground, the face
upwards, without any coffin or box, the legs towards Mecca, and
then covered with earth, so that it might, at the resurrection,
rise with its eyes towards (_El Kaaba_) Muhamed's mausoleum. No
money is paid for the ground, nor is any expense paid for a
monument: a stick or a stone stands erect at the head, and another
274 at the feet. If the deceased lived a moral, inoffensive, and
exemplary life, the public, at its own expense, oftentimes erects
(_kaba_) a cubical building with a dome at the top to the departed,
and he is thence denominated (_fakeer_) a saint.

[Footnote 181: A coba is a cubical building, about forty or
fifty feet square, having a dome on the top, inhabited by a
fakeer; the ground adjacent to this building is consecrated for
the dead, but is never inclosed. The living reverence the dead
by never, riding over these grounds; but travellers, in passing
stop and repeat a fatha. When the ground has been consecrated
to the dead, and the _coba_ has an inhabitant, who must be a
sanctified person, he immediatel