United States or Laos ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


But consider the gorgeous simplicity of it all! In the House of Suddhoo A stone's throw out on either hand From that well-ordered road we tread, And all the world is wild and strange; Churel and ghoul and Djinn and sprite Shall bear us company to-night, For we have reached the Oldest Land Wherein the Powers of Darkness range. From the Dusk to the Dawn.

And whom will he fight but the very people who, by keeping up the friction, have rubbed Aladdin's ring so hard and so long that a Djinn, by no means kindly disposed towards them, bursts forth at last to avenge the breaking of his sleep?

These relics are hatchets made of black rock, and arrow-heads not unlike those which the Arabs attribute to the Djinn; but as we approach the south we find the flints picked up more clumsily and unskilfully cut a proof that they were the work of a more barbarous people with less practical skill.

Lady Hester said it was my djinn or star which got me into such favour. On the third morning we breakfasted at Deir-el-Kamr, the town about one mile distant from Petedeen the palace, and returned to Djoun arriving late that night. She made me several presents, the most valuable of which I sent home to your charge by Euryalus. She has written to me once since.

But the tale leaked into the regimental canteen, and thence ran about the Province. A stone's throw out on either hand From that well-ordered road we tread, And all the world is wild and strange; Churel and ghoul and Djinn and sprite Shall bear us company to-night, For we have reached the Oldest Land Wherein the Powers of Darkness range. From the Dusk to the Dawn.

Those who could afford a copper or two were carried through the shallow water on the backs of half-naked, sweating Negroes from the village; but those who had nothing except their faith to support them, hobbled or crept over the stones, wetting their scanty rags; laughed at by black and brown children who feared to follow, because of the djinn who lived in a cave of evil yellow stones, guarding a hidden spring which gushed into the river.

"The Lord Maïeddine is the powerful djinn who has brought all thou couldst possibly desire, without giving thee even the trouble to wish for things," said Fafann, showing her white teeth, and glancing sidelong at the Roumia. "These are not all. Many of these things thou hast seen already. Yet there are more."

Perhaps there is no more perilous journey on earth than that, and if a traveller would vanish into the past, into such Oriental countries as the voyagers of Hakluyt saw with wonder, then to leave Sfax, and go across country to the Niger, would equal what once came of fooling with the arcana of the Djinn.

In that delightful book, "The Arabian Nights' Entertainments," one may read of Spirits good, and bad, and indifferent; of slaves of lamps, of rings and amulets, and talismanic charms; and of the marvels and wonders they performed. But never did Afrit, Djinn, or Genie perform greater miracles than steady-eyed, soft-voiced Peterby.

This dreaded and strange apparition, bristling with bayonets, armed with chains, hung over with holy images; that something not of this world, partaking of a ravenous ghoul, of a blind Djinn grown up from a cloud, and of the Old Man of the Sea, still faces us with its old stupidity, with its strange mystical arrogance, stamping its shadowy feet upon the gravestone of autocracy already cracked beyond repair by the torpedoes of Togo and the guns of Oyama, already heaving in the blood-soaked ground with the first stirrings of a resurrection.