in all the Arab provinces throughout this
empire, have subterraneous caverns or apartments, generally in the
form of a cone, for the preservation of their corn during a
scarcity or famine. During my residence in this country, I have
investigated the method, and have learned the art of constructing
these depositories of grain. They season them before the corn is
deposited. They should not be constructed in a clay soil. In these
_mitferes_, throughout the Arab provinces of Duquella, Temsena,
Shawiya, &c. they preserve the corn sound during thirty years. I
have been present at the opening of them after the corn had been
deposited twenty-one years. It was perfectly sound. When these
depositories are opened, each family takes a portion of the grain,
so as to distribute the whole immediately; otherwise, in a few
months, if not consumed, it acquires a peculiar bad flavour, which
is called the _mitfere_ _twang_. To prevent this, an Arab, on
opening one of these depositaries, lends corn to all his
neighbours, and in his turn he receives it back again, when they
respectively open theirs. It is unnecessary to expatiate on the
expediency of constructing _mitferes_ in a country oftentimes
visited by locusts, the plague, drought, or inundation. There would
be a manifest policy in establishing similar granaries in our
340 colony in South Africa, where I understand they are visited by
locusts, and where the soil is similar to that of West and South
Barbary. All the valuable gums that Barbary now supplies Europe
with, and also many articles of commerce not yet known at the Cape,
might be procured from Barbary, and if transplanted to that colony,
would undoubtedly thrive, from the similarity of climate and soil.

_Laws of Hospitality_.

The territory of the Emperor of Marocco, west of the mountains of
Atlas, and from the shores of the Mediterranean to the confines of
the Shelluh province of Haha, is one continual corn-field,
inhabited by Arabs living in douars or encampments: much of the
ground, however, lies fallow. These encampments are fixed generally
at a considerable distance from the track of travellers, so that a
person unacquainted with this circumstance, would be disposed to
imagine the country thinly inhabited. The tents in safe countries,
where there i