Bey, which his Highness, after his arrival in Tunis, sent to R. The great man here is the Sheikh Tahid, who was imprisoned for not having the tribute ready for the Bey.  The tax imposed is equivalent to two bunches for each date-tree.  The Sheikh has to collect them, paying a certain yearly sum when the Bey arrives, a species of farming-out.  It was said that he is very rich, and could well find the money.  The dates are almost the only food here, and the streets are literally gravelled with their stones.  Santa Maria again returned his horse to the Bey, and got another in its stead.  He is certainly a man of delicate feeling.  This gentleman carried his impudence so far that he even threatened some of the Bey’s officers with the supreme wrath of the French Government, unless they attended better to his orders.  A new Sheikh was installed, a good thing for the Bey’s officers, as many of them got presents on the occasion.

We blessed our stars that a roof was over our heads to shield us from the burning sun.  We blew an ostrich-egg, had the contents cooked, and found it very good eating.  They are sold for fourpence each, and it is pretended that one makes an ample meal for twelve persons.  We are supplied with leghma every morning; it tastes not unlike cocoa-nut milk, but with more body and flavour.  R. very unwell, attributed it to his taking copious draughts of the leghma.  Rode out of an evening; there was a large encampment of Arabs outside the town, thoroughly sun-burnt, hardy-looking fellows, some of them as black as negroes.  Many people in Toser have sore eyes, and several with the loss of one eye, or nearly so; opthalmia, indeed, is the most prevalent disease in all Barbary.  The neighbourhood of the Desert, where 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.