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Not here to see the darling of the Douars; the pride of every Chacal, Zephyr, and Chasseur in Africa; the Amie du Drapeau, who was adored by everyone, from Chefs de Bataillons to fantassins, and toasted by every drinker, from Algiers to Oran, in the Champagne of Messieurs les Generaux as in the Cric of the Loustics round a camp-fire!
The little man is master of every turn in the road, and has only failed once when he brought us to a large village, where the bulk of the inhabitants of outlying douars had attacked the Governor's house, with very little success, on the previous day, and were now about to be attacked in their turn by the Governor and his bodyguard.
They are striped brown and yellow, but a splendid tabernacle in the centre, of richer colors and finer fabric, bears at the apex a golden ball with plumes of ostrich feathers, the sign of authority. This tent is oval in form, resembling an overturned ship. It is the residence and office of the sheikh, or chief of the douar: several douars united form a tribe, governed by a caid.
We rode on, across dry plain, over old river-beds, through patches of olive-trees, pink oleander, and castor-oil plant; leaving Arab douars behind; meeting with white cow-birds which recalled Tetuan; passing men with merchandise on camels and donkeys, strings of country people, and wanderers of all sorts; stopping to rest near wells where swallows were building in the brickwork and donkeys stood asleep in the shade; watching Arabs beating out corn with sticks, men ploughing, until we were once more amongst "greenery" and in a fertile stretch of country.
Among the stories circulated in the Tuesday market was one to the effect that a lion had come down from the Atlas, and after taking toll of the cattle belonging to the douars on its road, had been shot at the western end of the forest.
After camping at Djelfa for two days the column moved to the southwest, from whence word had come that the marauders were operating against the tribes whose DOUARS were situated at the foot of the mountains. The little band of Arabs who had accompanied them from Bou Saada had disappeared suddenly the very night that orders had been given to prepare for the morrow's march from Djelfa.
Away from the fertility that marks the neighbourhood of the douars, one finds a few spare bushes, suddra, retam, or colocynth, a few lizards darting here and there, and over all a supreme silence that may be felt, even as the darkness that troubled Egypt in days of old.
"I think," I said, "the safest plan will be for my sister to try the horses, and see which suits her the best." Then the different routes to the water-falls were discussed, and the different Douars or Arab villages where it would be best to have a Diffa, or feast, provided, Mary's judgment being asked in every instance.
Behind him came three black slaves, sleek, armed, proud in the pride of their lord, and with this simple retinue the khalifa was on his way to tithe the newly-harvested produce of the farmers who lived in that district. Dangerous work, I thought, to venture thus within the circle of the native douars and claim the lion's share of the hard-won produce of the husbandmen.
A singular sensation came on him, half of familiarity, half of strangeness, as he advanced along them; for twelve years he had seen nothing but the bare walls of barrack rooms, the goat-skin of douars, and the canvas of his own camp-tent. To come once more, after so long an interval, amid the old things of luxury and grace that had been so long unseen wrought curiously on him.
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