were often two or three of them, one on the shoulder, the other on the camel hair cords that were twisted round the haik on the head. The Carthagenian fowl, the falcons, were unhooded as soon as the sport began. They flew at first straight up, but their eyes getting soon accustomed to the light, they saw their prey, and pounced upon and killed it in a second. A little further on, the tramp of our horses started two hares, and the falcons were again loosed. Whilst the hare ran it escaped its enemy, but the moment it hesitated, or attempted to retreat, the bird was on its back, picking out its brain and eyes. It is with falcons as with men: some are good, others bad. It was curious to hear the Arabs scold, rail at, and reproach the bad ones; and the pride of the possessor of the best was great indeed. It is during the summer that preparation is made for winter sports. The bird, on its first flight, generally falls into the snare of the falconer. Whilst still wild it is taught to pursue its prey. An easy chase is in the beginning set before it, and little by little it learns to wait for the orders of its master, to recognise his voice, his signal, and the bait, and to pounce upon the started hare, amid the different directions of the falconer, which

VOL. II.

E

the voracious bird eagerly obeys.* Thus the falcon of the Arab is still the bird of the middle ages, an object of the most anxious attention, and of honour, and of glory.

We admired on this occasion, as we had always done, the address and boldness of the horsemen, and the beauty of their horses; one mare the property of Mohamed, the friend of our friend Rhaled, especially struck us. This mare was so light-footed, that she might, to use an Arab expression, have galloped on the bosom of a woman.

On expressing our admiration of her beauty, Rhaled said: "She had a sister who could alone contend with her; they were objects of envy to all, and the pride of their master, when Mohamed was taken prisoner by the cavaliers of the Emir. He escaped however, but hardly had he reached his door, when the chaous of the sultan came in sight. Mohamed sprung instantly on his mare, and when the cavaliers reached the tent, they saw by the loosened picket-ropes that he had again

The Arabs, to allure back the falcon, which attempts to fly away, throw the skin of a hare in the air, uttering a shrill cry to draw the attention of the bird. The falcon, supposing the hare alive, pounces on it with such rapidity as often to be down on the earth before the skin falls.

got away. To overtake him seemed impossible. One of them, however, jumped from his horse, and ran up to the other mare, still at picket, when the son of Mohamed drew a pistol and shot him dead. This mare could alone have overtaken her sister; so the son saved the life of his father."

As Rhaled finished his story, one of the servants of Rhomsi came up to us. He brought a letter from the Commandant of our little column, ordering us to return as quickly as possible, as our squadrons were about to march from Saida. We lost no time in attending to this order, and on arriving at the bivouac, learnt that we were to form part of the column of General Renaud, who was to leave on the first of April, on an expedition towards the Oasis of the South. This we looked upon as a piece of great good fortune; and, a few days afterwards, when the column, with a long convoy, quitted Saida, we were all quite elated at the idea of penetrating into those regions, of which so many marvellous stories are told.

It was necessary to take water with us, otherwise we might have been without it for whole days. The pure element was therefore carried by several hundred mules; whilst two thousand camels, in a long, unbroken string, ascending

and descending the ups and downs of our route, to the monotonous, sing-song murmurings of their conductors, were laden with our other provisions. On our march we started hares by hundreds, and the drivers, setting up an hurrah at their appearance, which frightened them still more, threw their knotty sticks at them, and hit many. Our greyhounds, however, were more successful still; and when we arrived at our bivouac, so terrible had been our massacre, that the Arabs could hardly get any sale for as fine hares as were ever seen or eaten.

Two days afterwards, we bivouacked on the banks of the Chotts. These immense salt lakes, though totally dried up in the summer, can only be crossed by a very few passages in April. The day following, at the reveillie, every one was stirring. But, alas! for many days, the half bellowing, half bleating whines of the camels, whilst being laden by their drivers, had been our reveillie. These plaintive bleatings are one of the miseries of a march in the south. On the other side of the Chotts, we were about to reach the Bled-el-Rhela-the Land of Emptiness; but meanwhile, before we had crossed over, the long file of camels, slowly advancing, at long intervals, through

a narrow pass, took "shapes fantastic, more and more grotesque." Sometimes one saw only immense heads; others looked, in the distance, like ships; many seemed to breathe flames, and to float in the air; and some appeared to march with their legs uppermost, and in constant motion. All this was merely one of the singular effects of a mirage, so common in the Chotts, and which those who have not seen them, laugh at as a fable.

Our guide was a robber Arab-one of the Hamians, a freebooter of the highlands. His nose hooked like a vulture's beak, his black, liquid eye, quiet, impassible face, and thin, bony figure, made him a very good representative, in personal appearance, of the Saharian. He conducted us to a spot where there were wells, covered over with branches of trees, beneath which we found the water pure, deliciously cool, and abundant. The branches are placed over the wells to protect them from the sand, so that we religiously replaced them on leaving, for a well in the Sahara is a sacred place, and all travellers are taught to respect it as such. On, then, and on we marched through the Land of Emptiness. Its solitudes seemed interminable, and are not like other solitudes. They contracted and oppressed, instead of expanding