The Tweebs have each from two to six disciples, whom they instruct and initiate in their secrets of the healing art.  In their regular visits to any town, they parade the streets with great pomp and gravity, followed by a train of miserable objects, who pretend to have been recently recovered from a long and dangerous illness by the extraordinary skill of the doctor; while, in fact, their cadaverous countenances and emaciated bodies seem to contradict their assertions, and bear ample testimony that they are hurrying fast to that country, “from whose bourne no traveller returns.”  Under the pretence of charity, these poor wretches are supported by this Moorish Aesculapius, while his views in so doing are entirely selfish; that by their means he may better impose on the credulous, and obtain considerable sums of money.  When any one of them (by chance) effects what he considers a great cure, it is communicated in a circular letter to all the doctors in Barbary.

They select one of their elders every year, and appoint him to preside over them.  His business, for the time being, is to settle all their controversies:  he is the fountain of all justice among them; for as they are looked upon to be petty saints, they are a privileged set of men, and not in the least subject to either civil or military jurisdiction.  They possess the art of taming the monstrous serpents of the country, and rendering them perfectly harmless:  in short, their profession is nothing but a system of the grossest empiricism.

Formerly the country could boast of having scientific astronomers; for, like the ancient Egyptians, the inhabitants of Barbary cultivated the science of astronomy with great success; but as it was communicated from generation to generation by tradition only, it is not surprising that the increasing indolence of the Moors should have made them relinquish the more abstruse parts, and that now it is dwindled into mere astrology.  Their habitual mode of living, frequently exposed at night, during all weathers, in the open air, enables them without difficulty to observe the fixed stars, and their influence on the weather, and they have thence ascribed to every one some peculiar property, by which the events of human life, good or bad, are regulated.

In poetry I am told the Moors are very successful.  The subjects of their poems are mostly eulogies of the great men who have belonged to the tribe of which the poet is a member:  these compositions are all extempore, like those of our ancient bards, or those of the Celts, spoken of by Julius Caesar, who wandered about in Gaul and other parts of the continent with their harps.  The poets of Barbary have no settled home, but with an instrument somewhat resembling a mandolin they wander from place to place, and house to house, composing and singing pieces improviso, on the honour and antiquity of their tribe.  From persons acquainted with the language, I have heard, that they are very happy in this species of poetry, which is far from deficient in point of harmony.  For myself I can say, that though unable to enter into the spirit of it from the circumstance of not perfectly understanding the language, yet I was much pleased with the effect.