"The blood of Bou-Salem will be my reward."

Two weeks passed away, and the General saw nothing more of Djelloul, so that one evening he ordered him to be brought before him. He was found in a Moorish café, which he was in the habit of frequenting daily, near the gate of the city.

"Well, have you forgotten your promises?" said the General.

"You are very impatient," replied Djelloul; "I know how to wait, I do, and yet it is only my vengeance that you are to execute. I am out on the watch every night; when the twenty-ninth night without a moon shall have come, the hour will be near at hand, and, please God, I will lead you where it is my pleasure you should go."

On the twenty-ninth night Djelloul was with the General. "Let those whom you command," said he, "be ready to-morrow night; the hour is come."

The next day the troops were on foot at six o'clock, and the column marched towards Sig. On that day the battalions of Mustapha-benTami were on their route towards Oran, on a coup de main expedition, whilst the French force was approaching the tents of the Garabas, "There is the enemy!" suddenly cried out

Djelloul. I have put them into your hands, and now I am free to pursue my vengeance." So saying, the Arab started off at the head of his cavaliers. When the rally sounded, when there was nothing left to pillage and plunder, Djelloul returned, but the last. "My arm is tired, and I am satiated with blood," said he, to Captain Bentzman, "but Bou-Salem has escaped me. Just now, however, on returning, I saw the oldest man of the tribe behind a thicket, and my pistol was already at his head, when the Powerful One sent me an idea. So I said to him, 'You Mohamed, you are the oldest among the Garabas; I give you your life; return to Bou-Salem and his people, and tell them that it is I who have betrayed them. But tell Bou-Salem that my vengeance is not satisfied. Tell him every time he lays his head upon a stone, to look well under it, to see that there is no poignard there."

Djelloul afterwards got his vengeance to the full, but being killed in a combat, did not long survive it. The Garabas, having made their submission, now cultivate the plain in peace, and if you ask them why for two hours in the day, and during a part of the night, when the moon shines in all its brightness, the wind raises

regular clouds and whirlwinds of dust, they will answer" The city, of which you see the ruins on all sides, refused to confess the Musselman faith, when the Mehal made the conquest of the country. The prophet, however, sent a violent wind, which destroyed its walls, and caused the death of a part of its population. Since then, once in the night and once during the day, these souls in pain traverse, weeping, the ruins of the city, which are now partly buried under the alluvial soil; and thence come the moans and the groans that are mingled so mournfully with the wind.

It was the General's object to inform himself of the causes that had crippled the growth of a village so advantageously situated. He invited, then, all the colonists who had anything to say to meet him at five o'clock. Never was a spectacle more melancholy than this audience, held in the smoky room of a wooden cabaret. Seated on a miserable joint-stool, the General interrogated with great kindness all these unfortunates, whilst notes were taken at a ricketty table of their names, their families, their resources, and their wants. They all had the same story to tell, there was no one to employ their hands and to remu

nerate their labours, whilst disease and death decimated their families. Two families, however, from the Pyrenees, had got on pretty well, their fields yielded them profitable crops, they had each a little flock, and all they wanted of the General was a ram. The General took pleasure in listening to them, and said to the woman, "Well, you are happy here; you are better off here than in France ?" "Oh yes, General," replied the good woman, "we are doing very well here, but there is one thing hard to bear; it is a sad thing never to hear the sound of the church bell." And, indeed, for the success of a colony in Africa it is necessary not only to think of the body, but of consolation also, which recalls the souvenirs of infancy-the church, and the church bell. The first order, therefore, that the General gave was for the construction of a chapel at St. Denis-duSig. One man alone, named Nassois, besides the two families, had done well. He possessed a long, handsome house built of stone, where all the waggoners, who passed and repassed incessantly on the Oran road, were in the habit of stopping, but he was an old hand, having been many years in Africa. Skilful, energetic, and industrious, he turned every thing to account; and who will

believe it? the bank note, thanks to him, had become known to the Arabs, not notes of the bank of France, but notes of the bank of Nassois! A note from him would pass current, from hand to hand, throughout all the markets of the environs, as ready money.

As soon as the General had finished his questions, and compared his notes, his resolution was formed. The little colony, he saw at once, required government; to be placed under some firm positive authority, empowered to decide summarily all disputes, and with resources sufficient to rescue the poor people from the sufferings with which the approaching winter season threatened them. An order was consequently immediately sent to the commandant, Charras, immediately to pitch his bivouac in the close vicinity of Sig, which being done, the soldiers instantly became lime-burners, stone-cutters, masons, and labourers; and a few months later any one who passed through St. Denis-du-Sig, would not have known it; the village was transformed.

tain

A little beyond St. Denis commence the moungorges which separate the valleys of Sig and of the Habra from Mascara and the plain of Eghris. It was on a dark night that we crossed