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The headman repeats his welcome and is closely questioned concerning the existing supplies of water, corn, milk, eggs, and poultry. These points being settled, Salam asks abouts guards. The strangers would sleep outside the n'zala: Can they have guards at a fair price?
They have never seen the sea or even a big Moorish town, but they have heard of these things from travellers and traders who have passed their nights in the n'zala in times recent or remote, and sometimes they appeal to me to say if these tales are true. Are there great waters of which no man may drink waters that are never at rest?
The procedure when we approach a n'zala in the evening is highly interesting. Some aged headman, who has seen our little company approaching, stands by the edge of the road and declares we are welcome. Salam or the Maalem responds and presents me, a traveller from the far country of the Ingliz, carrying letters to the great sheikhs of the South.
Then he gave each man three dollars for travelling money, about nine shillings English, and out of it the mules were to be fed, the charges of n'zala and fandak to be met, and if there was anything over the men might buy food for themselves.
Every n'zala is a Government shelter for travellers; you may pitch your tent within the four walls, and even if you remain outside and hire guards the owners of the huts are responsible for your safety, with their worldly goods, perhaps with their lives.
It is part of the Maalem's duty to decide upon the place of our nightly sojourn, and so to regulate the time of starting, the pace, and the mid-day rest, that he may bring us to the village or n'zala in time to get the tent up before darkness has fallen.
The main track, not to be dignified by the name of road, is always to be discerned clearly enough, at least the Maalem is never in doubt when stray paths, leading from nowhere to the back of beyond, intersect it. At long intervals we pass a n'zala, a square empty space surrounded by a zariba of thorn and prickly pear. The village, a few wattled huts with conical roofs, stands by its side.
Rise early, fare simply, and travel far enough to appreciate whatever offers for a camping-ground, though it be no more than the grudging shadow of a wall at mid-day, or a n'zala not overclean, when from north, south, east, and west the shepherd boys and girls are herding their flocks along the homeward way.
The price of corn, eggs, and chickens was amazingly high, and the Maalem explained that the n'zala was kept by some of the immediate family of Mahedi el Menebhi, who had put them there, presumably to make what profit they could. I looked very carefully at our greedy hosts.
The patriarch, with his long white beard and clear far-seeing eyes, receives the respect and obedience of all the village, settles all disputes, and is personally responsible to the kaid of the district for the order and safety of the n'zala. Three men come from the well, each bearing a big clay amphora of water that must be boiled before we drink it.
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