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Updated: June 10, 2025
Occasionally we saw pairs of the stately jabirus, or adjutant-looking marabouts, wading among the shoals, and spur-winged geese, and other water-fowl, but there was scarcely a crocodile or a hippopotamus to be seen. At the end of the first week, an old man called at our camp, and said he would send a present from his village, which was up among the hills.
The first night the halt was at a Cabyle village, where hospitality was eagerly offered to persons of such high reputation for sanctity as the Marabouts; but afterwards habitations grew more scanty as the ground rose higher, and there was no choice but to encamp in the tents brought by the attendants, and which seemed to Arthur a good exchange for the dirty Cabyle huts.
Maulo, the camp humourist, declaimed loudly at the top of his lungs, mocking the marabouts, the buzzards, the vultures great and small, the kites and the eagles. "Go to the lion," he cried, "he kills much, and leaves. Little meat will you get here. We keep what we get!" And the men broke into meaningless but hearty laughter, as though at brilliant wit.
But higher still, remark the Bengal roses, sparsely scattered among the laces of the daucus, the plumes of the linaria, the marabouts of the meadow-queen; see the umbels of the myrrh, the spun glass of the clematis in seed, the dainty petals of the cross-wort, white as milk, the corymbs of the yarrow, the spreading stems of the fumitory with their black and rosy blossoms, the tendrils of the grape, the twisted shoots of the honeysuckle; in short, all the innocent creatures have that is most tangled, wayward, wild, flames and triple darts, leaves lanceolated or jagged, stalks convoluted like passionate desires writhing in the soul.
The afternoon sunshine beat upon the koubbahs of marabouts, and the plastered graves or headstones of less important folk; but so pearly pale were they all that the golden quality of the light was blanched as if by some strange, white magic, and became like moonlight shining on a field of snow. There were no names on any of the tombs, even the grandest.
Come, I know how it was; you complimented Madame de Vandenesse at the ball on her marabouts and she has put them on again for your sake. She likes you, and you adore her; it may be a little rapid, but it is all very natural. If I were mistaken you wouldn't be twisting your gloves like a man who is furious at having to sit here with me instead of flying to the box of his idol.
This speech I most devoutly devoured, and things certainly wore a brighter aspect this morning. But we now anxiously wait news from En-Noor. We moved up the valley of Seloufeeat, our spirits buoyant and mounting high, whilst the air of the morning was soft and fresh, not unlike that of Italy. After two hours we arrived at the City of Marabouts, or Tintaghoda.
Stokes cried out with rapture, the instant the bonnet filled her eye, that it was "A sweet little bonnet blue crape and white marabouts!" Bessie smiled most becomingly as it was tried on, and blushed at herself in the glass. "But a shower of rain will spoil it," she objected, nodding the downy white feathers that topped the brim.
Out of the lake, we learned, ran a broad river to the westward; a fact which created in us the most lively interest, for it might afford us the long-looked-for means of making our escape. As we neared the sacred precincts, the marabouts again endeavoured to make us change our religion.
I told him the Rais and all Turks had braces to their pantaloons. He simply replied, "Braces are not permitted by our marabouts." It is, therefore, very satisfactory to read the Arabic New Testament in these countries; for, besides presenting all the ideas and metaphorical adornments, such reading often gives you the very words and idiomatical expressions of the people.
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