massacred; a Targui had discovered him in a fallen tent between two goat-skin bags. The child was not wounded, but he was covered with blood.

"Do you know Ben-Mansour ?" asked Biska. "He was my father."

"Where is he?"

"If he be dead, he is behind that thicket; he was flying with me when one of you struck him, and he fell.

(6 'All this blood is his," added the child, weeping, and showing his bloody burnous.

"Fetoum, I am the man who have killed him!" cried out Biska. "My brethren," added he, addressing the Touareugs who were pressing round Fetoum, "we have made ourselves many enemies this night; let us spare this child; one act of generosity may provoke another."

"At the same moment two Soukmarem (a fraction of the Touareug) brought in the body of BenMansour, the one by the feet, the other by the head; the crowd opened to make way for it, and then closed in again, the more eagerly to examine the corpse placed upon the sand before Fetoum. Ben-Mansour was a man of high blood and perfectly fair complexion. The lance of Ould-Biska

struck him in the back between the shoulders, and came out at his chest.

Fetoum, motionless, but with compressed lips, fixed a stern long gaze on the body, and then turning to Biska:

"Ould Biska," said she, "I am your wife as I promised, but take your poignard and finish your work; rip open the carcase of the cursed one; tear out his heart, and throw it to our greyhounds." That which she ordered was done, and the dogs of Touareug ate the heart of the chief of the Chambas.

It is by the speed of their camels, called Maharis, that the Touareug are able to perform their admirable coups de main, for, says the proverb:

"The riches of the people of the Tell is grain; "The riches of the Saharian are sheep; "The riches of the Touareugs are maharis." The mahari is much more elegantly formed than the common camel; it has the graceful ears of the gazelle, the supple shapeliness of the ostrich, and the slender drawn-up belly of the greyhound. Its head is high, and finely set upon its neck, its eyes black and prominent; its lips long and firm, hiding well its teeth; its boss small, but its breast

very protuberant; the stump of its tail is short; its legs from the knee upwards are exceedingly muscular, but, nearer to the foot, tidy and slim; and the palms of its feet are not large and flattened out. Finally, the mane upon its shoulders is very thin, and its hair invariably fawn-colouredremarkably fine and soft.

The mahari endures hunger and thirst better than the camel. The camel whines pitifully, and thus often betrays a caravan to an ambushed enemy. The mahari never complains. The birth and the education of this valuable animal are therefore matters of great importance and anxiety. The young mahari has always his place in the tent; the children play with him, and he is one of the family. Thus gratitude attaches him to his master, whom instinct teaches him to recognise as his best friend. In the first spring his hair is cut, and he is given the name bouketaa, [father of cutting]. For a whole year he is free, and only in the following spring, when he is weaned, takes the name of heug [a word from the verb hakeuk, signifying he has consciousness]. It is then that his education begins. A halter is put on him which goes through his legs, and he is left picketed till he understands the meaning of this;

that is to say, that he is to remain the whole day without movement, at the will of his master. The heug is then subjected to other discipline. His nose is bored for the reception of an iron ring, which answers the purpose of a bit; then comes the rahhala, a sort of saddle, with a concave seat, broad back and high pommel, a hollow from bottom to top. The rider is seated in the rahhala as in a cup, his back supported, his legs crossed over the neck of the mahari, and kept by this pression itself in the hollow of the seat. The slightest pull at the nose of the animal gives so much pain, that he obeys passively, obliques to the left, to the right, retreats or advances, or should he be tempted by a bush and stoop to eat, a sharp pull at once brings his head high over his shoulders. Finally, when the heug will stop suddenly, no matter how swift be his pace, on his master jumping or falling from the rahhala, and when he can make a circle round a lance planted in the ground for the purpose, and start off at a gallop immediately the lance is caught up, then his education is complete. He may then be taken on expeditions; he is no longer a heug, but a mahari. Such is the education of these coursers of the desert, whose marvellous rapidity,

may

sobriety, energy, and courage, render enterprises which we are apt to regard as fabulous, easily accomplishable.

The progress was long and painful; finally the culminating point of the mountain was reached. Before the caravan was a steep descent, covered with brambles. To the south was a yellow plain, stretching out far beyond the range of the eye. Then, for the first time, said the Arab narrator, I understood the immense signification of the saying: "Bless the Lord, as far as the sands extend." The next day Ould-Biska bid

adieu to the caravan.

After many more marches, through endless plains, where the exercised eye of the pilot could trace the road by signs, which escaped the notice of every one else, the travellers attained mountains, which they had long seen as blue points on the distant horizon. These mountains are inhabited by a negro population, who are, as it were, the advanced sentinels of the Soudan. There grows in abundance the hachich, an intoxicating plant, sold at Tunis and Tripoli; there may be seen trees resembling our poplars, whence flows a white gum, oum-el-nam (the mother of the world), a sort of fig-tree, of a resinous quality, which is