moisture. 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 venture to visit
the sheikh, assured by our spahi guides that we shall be welcome. We
are received blandly by the officer, offensively by his dogs, a throng
of veritable jackals who scream around our feet as we enter. The
interior, rich and severe at once, exhibits saddles and arms, gilded
boxes and silken curtains, without a single article of furniture. The
sheikh treats us to mild tobacco in chiboukhs--another sign that we
are not yet in Kabylia: never is a Kabyle seen smoking. We reciprocate
by offering coffee, made on the spot over our spirit-lamp--a process
which the venerable sheikh watches as a piece of jugglery, and then
dismisses us on our way with the polite but final air which Sarah may
be supposed to have used in dismissing Hagar.

[Illustration: THE STONE TURBAN.]

The douar, like a city, has suburbs of greater squalor than its
interior, and among them, under the palm trees, we see women washing
clothes or engaged in the manufacture of couscoussou, a dish common
to the Arab, the Kabyle and the traveler hereabouts, and so important
that a description of its preparation may be acceptable.

In the opening of a small tent, then, we paused to watch an old
moukere (or daughter of Araby), whose hands look as if she had been
stirring up the compost-heap of bones, pickings and dirt before the
door. With these hands she rolls dexterously a quantity of moistened