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was alwaysan apprehension of their escaping. Some of them on two occasions broke their chains, when the caravan was traversing mountainous tracts thickly covered with brambles. But their evasion, which for a moment they succeeded in effecting, did not end in an escape, for their proprietors had with them some of those marvellously gifted Arabs, who can follow the slightest trace, and interpret the minutest signs. A few grains of sand enable them, they pretend, to discriminate age and sex; nay, more, they maintain that by a foot-print alone they can distinguish the tread of a woman from that of a young girl.

However this may be, a few herbs and a crushed leaf sufficed in marshes and amidst brambles to put them on the track of the fugitives, the greater number of whom they re-captured.

"The

Suddenly whilst one of these hunts was going on, the Kiafats cried out, "Be on your guard, there is a lion in the neighbourhood!" Many a one then thought of his far-away tent, but every gun was loaded, every trigger cocked. feet of the lion always follow the feet of negroes," added the Kiafats; "be men, for the wild beast cannot be far off." The travellers then advanced in close order and in perfect silence, the Kiafats

in front.

"There he is !" they cried out, retiring

to the rear; and the party saw an enormous lion sleeping at the foot of a tree, in which a negro with a chain on one foot had hidden himself. His companion or rather the remains of his halfdevoured companion lay underneath. The camels at first took fright, but became suddenly quiet, for by the time the travellers had crept softly, for fear of awaking the brute, up to the place where he had been seen lying, he had disappeared; the trembling negro remaining in the tree. Not having been able to break their chains the poor slaves had not been able to continue their flight, and when attacked by the lion both had sought refuge in the tree. But one of them was not sufficiently active, and the lion springing on him when he was half way up, tore him down, and, after devouring him in sight of his companion, laid himself down to sleep.

This was not the last adventure on the home voyage, and it required all the experience of Cheggueun to take safely into port the large company whom he commanded as absolutely as a captain of a vessel does his crew.

Do you recollect that enchanting symphony you heard at Paris some few years ago? The east

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and its perfumes, the desert and its naked majestic grandeur, seemed pictured to the imagination in its expressive notes. This narrative of M. Daumas leaves the same impression. The primitive character of the country and of its Arab inhabitant are there imaged in perfection; and when one comes to the last page one exclaims internally What, no more?" The narrative, to be sure, contains other matter very learned and very curious relating to commerce, and the traffic in, and treatment of slaves among Musselmen; but throughout the whole voyage the poetry of the desert predominates. One lives with Cheggueun the life of an Arab voyager, partaking of all his perils, his hardships, and his enjoyments. I know only one Saharian song which depicts with the same truth, the wandering life so dear to the tribes of the high plateaux. These verses of Saharian psalmody struck me as a natural epilogue to the recital of the Khrebir.

On a vast plain is the wandering Arab encamped,
Nothing troubles the silence around him,

He hears not in the day but his camel's hoarse moans,
At night the cry of the jackals and the angel of death.
His house is a piece of out-spread cloth,
Fastened to the sand by pointed bones.
To be ill! his remedy is exercise.

Will he regale himself and his friends?
He chases the ostrich and the gazelle.

The herbage, which God makes grow in the fields,
Is the pasture for his flocks to feed on.

Under his tent he has his dog always near him, Who warns him of the approach of the robber. His wife is with him, and her clothing is simpleA necklace of pieces of coin,

Grains of coral, and buds of clover.

He has no other perfume than pitch and tar,
And the musk dung of the Gazelle ;
Nevertheless is the Musselman happy.

He glories in his lot, and blesses his Creator.
The sun is the hearth at which I warm myself;
The light of the moon is my torch;
The fruits of the earth are my riches;

The milk of my camels is my aliment;
The wool of my sheep clothe me;

I lie down whenever the night overtakes me;
My house cannot fall;

I am sheltered from all the caprices of the Sultan

Sultans are as capricious as children,

And have lion's claws; trust not to them.

I am a bird of passage;

Like it I carry no provisions with me;

I sow not, I reap not,

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103

PROVINCE OF ORAN.

GENERAL DE LAMORICIERE.

I.

THREE o'clock had been just announced by the helmsman on board the Charlemagne, which was going ten knots through the water, on a fine night in the month of November, tracing a track of fire through a sea-like mirror, when the sailor called out that the light-house of Oran was in sight. Immediately every one was on deck delighted at the near prospect of quitting his floating prison, and the excellent Captain Arnaud-for whilst the world stands, the officer accustomed to a land life will prefer his horse to the solid planks and capricious bounds of a vessel.

Two hours afterwards we entered the bay of Merz-el-Kebir, which the sun was brightening up with its first rays. Having been on leave of.

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