It was broad and on either side of it were the dwellings of the inhabitants set close together because the space within the stockade was limited.

These were not huts but square buildings of mud with flat roofs of some kind of cement.

Evidently they were built upon the model of Oriental and North African houses of which some debased tradition remained with these people.

Thus a stairway or ladder ran from the interior to the roof of each house, whereon its inhabitants were accustomed, as I discovered afterwards, to sleep during a good part of the year, also to eat in the cool of the day.

Many of them were gathered there now to watch us pass, men, women, and children, all except the little ones decently clothed in long garments of various colours, the women for the most part in white and the men in a kind of bluish linen.
I saw at once that they had already heard of the fight and of the considerable losses which their people had sustained, for their reception of us prisoners was most unfriendly.