The composition of an Arab orchestra is not always the same; there are divers combinations. There is always a bendir, and there are tabellas and chekacheks or pipes; and again more pipes or flutes, smaller in size; and a gambri and perhaps a mejoued, the latter practically imitations of European mandolines and violas. With these crazily mixed elements are given the concerts that one hears so often in the open air or in the Moorish cafés. The music, if music it is, rises and falls in erratic

cadences, sometimes brutal and sometimes soft; but never melodious and always shrill and brassy.

Whether or no Arab music is great music is no part of the writer of this book to attempt to explain. The following anecdote of the late Bey of Tunis, who died in 1906, has some bearing on the question of native taste in that line.

About fifty years ago, before the legions of France invaded the country, the Mussulman sovereigns of the period regularly bought European slaves, brought to them by pirate ships cruising in the Mediterranean. One of these unfortunate captives, brought before the Bey of Tunis and questioned as to his capabilities, admitted in a rash moment that he was the leader of an orchestra.

“Just what I want,” said the Bey. “I always wished to have a band.”

The prisoner began to feel uncomfortable. He saw the grave danger which menaced him. There were no instruments, and to his Majesty he explained that he must have a big drum, several little ones, large and small flutes, violins and violoncellos, trombones and cymbals.

“I have more than enough to pay for all you want,” was the answer of the Bey. And he gave an order to buy the instruments.

“But the musicians?” queried the prisoner in alarm.

“Musicians! I will give you fifty negroes.”

“But,” asked the orchestra leader, in despair, “do the negroes know music?”

“That,” answered the Bey, “is your affair, and if in a month they cannot play an air before me, you will be impaled, that’s all.”

The captive turned away, feeling that he had only one more month to live. But he thought he would see what the negroes could do. So he began to teach them, and for fourteen hours a day he made them practise on their instruments, giving them—as he was a Frenchman—a simple air, “Maman, les p’tits bateaux—qui vont sur l’eau—ont-ils des jambes?” But his efforts only plunged him in a deeper despair. One of the flute-players managed to repeat more or less accurately four or five measures, but the violinists could never get more than one note from their instruments. The trombones produced a series of most melancholy sounds. Only the big drum rose to the height of the occasion. When the fatal date arrived, the Bey summoned the leader of the orchestra before him.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

“Your Majesty—” began the trembling musician.

“Then play!” was the imperative command.

The fifty negroes commenced to tune up their instruments. But no two of them ever got the same key, and the discord they made was indescribable. However, when they seemed to have reached some semblance of unison, the leader gave the signal to commence, and the dusky orchestra attacked “Les p’tits bateaux.” The result was heartrending, and as the ear-splitting torture proceeded the leader said to himself: “In another ten minutes I shall be impaled.”

The concert finally came to an end unexpectedly with a solo on the big drum. The Bey kept silence for a minute, while the leader’s knees quaked against each other.

“It is not bad,” said his Majesty, slowly, “but I liked the first air best.”

The first air was the discordant attempt made by the negroes to tune their instruments. The leader of the orchestra began to breathe again. And from that time he gave concerts every day, and grew old and wealthy in the service of the court of the Bey of Tunis.

If one had only ears with which to hear, and no eyes with which to see, this music could readily be likened to that which accompanied the dancers of the King of Cambodia. This, at any rate, is the impression given the writer; he has heard both kinds, and there is no choice between them.

Dancing among the Arabs is a profession abandoned to the lower classes of women, and to slaves. There are two schools, as one might say: those who go around to the houses of the rich and dance for the edification of their employers and their guests, like the entertainers, the “lady-whistlers” and unsuccessful opera stars of other lands; and a less recherché class who are to all intents and purposes mere street dancers of a morality several shades removed from Esmeralda.

These latter, the “anâlem publiques,” as they are designated in the Frenchified towns of the littoral, are known otherwise as ghaouâzy, and by supposedly blasé travellers as almas, which indeed they are not, any more than are they houris. A musician of questionable talent usually accompanies these street dancers, and picks out a monotonous minor twang to which the “dancers” jerk and twist and shrug, and then come around for a collection if they don’t “dance” themselves into a state of coma—in which case they take up the collection first.

The danseuses of Biskra, Tunis and Constantine are daring, dusky beauties whose lives at any rate are more wholesome than those lived by the same class in the dance halls of Europe. There is a savagery about them and their dress that makes for a suggestion of another world; and if they are immoral it is because the strangers who have come among them have made them so. “It wasn’t so before the white man came,” is the plaint of many an exotic race. The Gringo complains of the American and his innovations, the Hindu wails loudly against the Englishman, and the Arab protests against the Latin and the Turk.

CHAPTER VIII

ARABS, TURKS, AND JEWS

Moors, called by the Arabs the Hadars; not a race apart, but the result of a crossing to infinity of all the diverse races of North Africa.

Koulouglis, descendants of Turks and Arab women.

Kabyles, the pure Berber race, speaking still their primitive language uncorrupted.

Arabs, descendants of the pure Arab of east of the Red Sea, but in reality “Berber-Arabs,” as the French know them, who still preserve in all its purity the Arab tongue, manners, and retain its ancient dress.

The Moors and the Koulouglis tend more and more to lose their individuality; the Kabyle is practically stationary; whilst the Berber-Arab is increasing in numbers at his traditional rate,—and here and there becoming so highly civilized that he wears store clothes and carries a revolver instead of a gun. He has also learned to drink absinthe and beer, in the towns, at least those of him who have become less orthodox.

There are two distinct classes of Arabs, those of the cities and those of the “Great Tents.” The former, by rubbing up with civilization, have become contaminated, whilst the real nomads of the interior still retain all their pristine force of character. The Arab hides with jealousy all particulars of his domestic life, and is a very taciturn individual, as taciturn almost as that classic type that one meets in south-eastern railway trains in England, fortified behind a copy of “The Thunderer.”

The docile, contemplative nature of the Arab permits him to pass long hours in a state of mental abstraction that would drive a man of affairs of the western world crazy. The Arab, however, is not hostile to activity, or even amusement, and will gamble for hours at some silly little game.

The Arab of the town apparently spends a good part of his time in a café. He drinks the subtle infusion, grounds and all, in innumerable potions, and plays at chess, cards or checkers.

For further amusement the Arab is quite content to gaze drowsily at the singing and dancing girls, the er rnaïa and ech chtahat, who make music, of a kind, and gyrate with considerably more fervour than grace. All the time his ear is soothed by as howling a discord as one will hear out of the practice hall of a village band in America or of “La Musique des Sapeurs-Pompiers” of the small town in France. Two guitars of sorts, and of most bizarre shape, a two-stringed fiddle (called a rbab) and a half a dozen Arab flutes (jouaks), each being played independently, cannot be expected to make harmony.

The Arab has his story-teller, too, a species of ballad singer or reciter who, for a price, tells stories, fables, and legends.

Among this class of professional story-tellers are the gouals, the improvisers, and the médahs, who are more like revivalists than mountebanks, and about as fanatical as the shrieking sisters of a “down-south” camp-meeting.

The Arab himself regards all stolidly, smokes and drink away, and doesn’t leave the café sometimes for days. It’s an orgie, if you like, but less reprehensible than the bridge-playing, drinking bouts of civilization, which last too often from Saturday until Monday morning.

The Arab of the desert, or the Bedouin, shows to advantage when compared with the town-dwelling Arab of the coast settlements, and whether he be Sheik of a tribe or Cadi of a community, is a hospitable, kindly person with even—at times—a sense of humour, and a guile which is rare in these days of artfulness. The town Arab, the “dweller within the walls,” is not primarily wicked or unreliable, but he has mixed with the sordid ways of commercialism, and his favours—extended always with a smile—are apt to bear a distinct relation to what he hopes to get out of you. If he is simply an ordinary individual, or a gamin who points out your road, his quid pro quo is not likely to be more than a cigarette, but the merchant of a bazaar who offers you coffee—and makes you take it, too—charges for it in the bill, if even your purchase of a “fatmah” charm, or a pair of “babouches” amounts to no more than two francs in value,—bargained down, of course, from his original demand of a hundred sous.

Like the Chinaman, the Arab can smile blandly when he wants to put you off the track. A smile that begins at the corners of the mouth and extends so that it makes a wrinkle at the nape of the neck is disconcerting to all but the smiler. That’s the Arab kind of a smile.

With all his faults and virtues the Arab of to-day is not a great offender; he is only an obstructionist. Indolent, insouciant and apathetic, the Arab lives to-day as in the past, indifferent to all progress. If you show him your typewriter, your fountain-pen or your kodak, he shrugs his shoulders and says simply, “Maboule! Maboule! You are fools! You are fools! Why try to kill time!”

At Msaken, a frontier post in Tunisia, which was established only fifteen or a score of years ago, and has already attained a population of ten thousand souls, a protest was actually presented to the government by the Arab population, asking that the great trading-route into the desert be not laid down through their city, but that they, the indigènes, be left to peace and tranquillity.

To sum the Arab up in a few words is difficult. He is a frequenter of that path which lies between the straight way of virtue and the quagmire of deceit. He is not alone in his profession, but it is well to define his position exactly. Like the Indian and the Chinaman, the Arab is deceitful, but scrupulously honest as far as appropriating anything that may rightly belong to you is concerned, when it comes to actual business transactions. A bargain once made with an Arab is inviolate. “Ils ne sont pas mauvais ces gens, mais ils sont voleurs quand même,” says every Frenchman of the Arab, unjustly in many cases, no doubt, but true enough in the general run. You must make your bargain first.

The real Arab—meaning literally a tent-dweller, for, in a certain sense, the town-dweller is no Arab—loves first and above all his horse. Next he loves his firearm, which poetically ought to be a six-foot, gold-inlaid, muzzle-loading matchlock, which would kick any man but an Arab flat on his back at every shot; actually in Algeria or Tunis the Arab is the possessor of a modern breech-loader. Next to his gun he loves his eldest son. Last comes his wife—or wives. Daughters don’t even count; he doesn’t even know how many he has. Until some neighbour comes along and proposes to marry one of them, a daughter is only a chattel, a soulless thing, though often a pretty, amiable, helpful being. The Arab of the settlements may be a lover of horse-flesh, too, but he only professes it; any old hack is good enough for him to ride. He will descant to you all the livelong day on the beauties and qualities of some rare specimen of the equine race which he has at the home of his father, back in the “Great Tents;” but meanwhile he drives, or rides, a sorry spavined nag fit only for the bone-yard.

North Africa is not only the Land of Sunshine; it is also the land of the burnous. This soft, floating drapery which clothes the Arab so majestically, whatever may be his social rank,—miserable meskine or opulent Caïd,—is a thing fearfully and wonderfully made.

There are burnouses and burnouses, as there are cheeses and cheeses. This ideal garment of the Mussulman Arab differs at times in form and colour and quality, but it is always a simple burnous. The Sheik of a tribe or the Caïd of a village wraps himself in a rich red robe, and the poor vagabond Arab of the hills and desert makes the best showing he can with his sordid pieced-up rag of a mantle.

The classic burnous is woven of a creamy white lamb’s wool, or that of a baby camel, though often its immaculateness is of but a brief duration. The Caïd and the Sheik rise above this, and the nomad often descends to a gunny-sack, from which exhales an odour sui generis; but one and all carry it off with grace and éclat, as does the Arlésienne the fichu, and the Madrillienne the mantilla. It is the garment that is worn by the Arab of the towns, by the lone sheep-herder of the plains, and by the nomad of the desert.

An Arab shepherd is a happy mortal if he can gain twenty francs a month, a little pap for breakfast, a dish of couscous for dinner, and a new burnous once a year. He will spend all his income (for he, apparently, as all his tribe, has acquired a taste for strong drink, though even he will not partake of it when it is red) on absinthe, of a kind, and tobacco, of a considerably better kind, every time he comes to town. How he clothes himself had best not be inquired into too closely, for excepting the burnous, he is mostly clothed in rags. The burnous is as effectual a covering as charity.

The Arab officials, the Sheik of a tribe, the Caïd, and the Cadi even, are all “decorated” as a sort of supernumerary reward for their services on behalf of the established government.

One day en voyage—in a compartiment of that slow-going express train which runs daily from Algiers to El Guerrah, and takes fourteen hours to do what it ought to, and will accomplish, in six, when they get some American locomotives to take the place of the old crocks now in service,—we met a young Caïd of a tribe of the Tell who had been summoned to Algiers to get the collaret of the Legion bestowed upon his manly breast. He was decorated already, for he was the son of the “Great Tents” and a powerful man in his community, but he was ready enough to make a place for another étoile. He said in his queer jargon French: “Li gouvernement y vian di me donni l’Itoile di Ligien. Ji suis content d’avoir.” We sympathized with him, were glad for him, and we parted, each on our respective ways, and by this time he is home waiting and hoping for the next. What won’t a man do for a bout de ruban or a silver star?

The Arab’s French is much like our own—queer at times, but it is expressive. The following beauties of judicial eloquence, from the bench of an Arab justice of the peace will explain the situation better than any further comment. With the Arab the Irish “bull” becomes a French “goat.”

“On peut entrer dans un cabaret sans être l’amant de quelqu’n.”

This is good enough French, though the sentiment is of doubtful morality.

“Le plaignant a lancé, alors, un coup de sifflet de désespoir.”

A “sifflet de désespoir” is presumably something akin to a wail.

“Le plaignant s’est adressé à la police parce qu’il désirait rentrer dans ses bouteilles.”

“Dans ses bouteilles,” may be Arab-French for “in his cups”—or it may not.

“Il portera de deuil aussi longtemps que sa femme sera morte.”

She will be dead a long time, no doubt, once having taken the fatal step.

“Je dirai encore deux mots, mais je serai très brief.”

Two words! That is very brief.

“Il n’a laissé que des descendants en ligne collatérale.”

What is a collateral descendant?

The Arabs’ struggles with French should give the rest of the world, who are not French, courage. They seem to care little for tenses or numbers, but they make their way nevertheless. A Zou Zou, in calling your attention to something, says simply, “Regarde,” but you understand, and so does he when you say “Regardez,” so what matter!

The Arab nourishes himself well, as well as circumstances will allow, though it must be remembered that the tenets of his religion call for abstemiousness. He differs from the Greek of old in that he believes in a good dinner and a light supper. “Eh bien!” said the traveller Montmaur, “I will dine with the Arab and sup with the Greeks.”

The Arab is a connoisseur in tea and coffee, and an adept at cigarette smoking.

Couscous is the plat du jour with the Arab. It is his national dish. Mutton or lamb (kebeh or kherouf) is almost the only meat, and most frequently the Arab roasts the carcass whole, spitted on a branch. He roasts it before, or over, an open fire, and accordingly it is all the better for that. In America we bake our meats, which is barbaric; and in England they boil them, which is worse. The Arab knows better.

The Arab eats his meat à la main, gnaws it with his teeth, and pulls it apart with his fingers; the delicate morsel, the titbit, is the kidney, and he is a lucky Arab who grabs it first, though if you are a guest in his tent he reserves it for you. Beef is seldom, if ever, eaten, but camel is in high esteem, the hump (hadba) being the best “cut.” Pork (el hallouf) is abhorred by the true Mussulman. He has reason! Dried meat or smoked meat, like the jerked beef of the Far West, is often carried on long desert journeys, when fresh meat is as scarce a commodity as it was on an Indiaman a hundred days out from Bombay a century ago.

The Arab eats soup, when he takes the trouble to make it, and he knows well its concocting. For pastry, too, the Arab has a sweet tooth, and it also frequently comes into the menu, with honey and dates predominating in its make-up.

The Arab smokes kif also, a concoction whose iniquitous effects are only equalled by those of the state-protected opium of Bengal.

These voluptuous epicurean Arabs smoke kif, not surreptitiously, but guiltily. Carefully they wipe their pipes and cook the little ball of drug, and offer it to you first with all the grace and seductiveness of a houri. You don’t accept, and they smoke it themselves, and in a short space drop off into a semi-intoxicated condition, forgetful of the world in the stupefying smoke which haloes about their heads. Like opium with the Chinaman, kif is the curse of the Arab.

After the Arabs and the Berbers, the Jews are the most striking race one meets on the African coast, or even in the interior, where they herd to themselves in some dingy quarter of an Arab village and ply their trades of jewellers, leather workers, embroiderers and, of course, as money changers. They talk Hebrew among themselves and Arabic with natives, and they are as clannish as Scotchmen.

The Berber and the Jew and the Arab are necessary to each other, whether they are town dwellers, village inhabitants or nomads. They make business, each of them, and they don’t live by taking in each other’s washing—as does the indigenous population of the Scilly Islands, or by exploiting tourists—as do the Swiss. Altogether the social system as worked out by the mixed races of North Africa seems to be a success.

One curses the Jews in Algeria and Tunisia, but then one curses them everywhere for the same attributes. The Hebrew of Algeria is in no way different from those of his brethren in other Mediterranean countries, and here he has a craftsman’s mission to fill and he fills it very well. Catch a Jew and make him into a tailor, a jeweller or a banker, and he is more adept at these professions than men of any other race on earth.

Are the Jews and Mussulmans men like other sons of Adam? This is a question which has been asked and reasked since the earliest times

of history, and no one yet seems to have decided the question. When the Papal See was transferred to Avignon in the Comtat Venaissin (it was for seventy years rooted in France), the position of the Jews seems to have been defined, and they were put on a par with orthodox religionists. But before and since, their status has been less readily defined. Froissart put it in non-contradictory words when he said that except in the lands of the church (in the Comtat), these aliens were everywhere chased and persecuted.

This reference to the church and the Jews recalls the fact that many Arab slaves of Barbary were owned by the Papal powers in the days when the traffic was a profitable one for Turkish pachas.

The slaves of Barbary were known all through the Mediterranean. Civita Vecchia in the eighteenth century, directly under Papal patronage, held a number of them of which the following is a description from an old record:—

These men in fact were for service in the Pontifical galley.

They were a fine race of servants, evidently!

The Jews are much less numerous in Algeria than in Morocco and Tunisia, but they take on a very considerable commercial importance in the picturesque conglomerate ensemble of peoples in the cities like Algiers, Oran or Tunis; they gather the small savings of the nomad races in a way that is the marvel of all who know their trade. Furthermore, as French citizens, they play no small part in political affairs. What they lack in numbers they make up in power, and the money-lending trade, while seemingly in disrepute, is quite a necessary one in commercial communities.

The Jews lend money to Christians the world over, men and nations alike, and in Africa they do the same to the improvident Arab. Clearly the Jew has a mission in life; he has found it out, and he sticks to it, and has ever since that historic hour in the Temple.

Of all the mixed races with which one rubs shoulders in Northern Africa, it is the Arab who interests us most. It is his country that we are in. It is the Arab who must be our guide, philosopher and friend. “Ask an Arab anything you like,” say the French, “but ask nothing of a Maltese or an Italian.” Why, they do not tell you, but simply shrug their shoulders in the expressive Frenchman’s way.

CHAPTER IX

SOME THINGS THAT MATTER—TO THE ARAB

Over and above all indigène control, the French administration is the real head of the Arabs in Algeria, and the Tunisian French fonctionnaires hold the same powers in Tunisia.

The Arab or Kabyle chiefs in Algeria are merely the agents for the execution of the government’s laws, civil or military, and in Tunisia the laws for each province (outhan) are made known to the Caïd by the authorities, and it is he who is held responsible for their observance. As for punishment for a crime committed,—for they are not all plaster saints,—the Arabs would much prefer the old Turkish bastinado to a sentence behind prison walls or a fine in money, sheep or goats. Does civilization civilize?

The Arabs are full of wise saws mostly adopted from the Koran, or from the Apocryphal books of the Prophet. They have a saying which might well be put into a motto suitable for the creed of any man:—

“El-Khams, El-Miter, El-Ansab and El-Aglane are the inventions of the devil.”

El-Khams is worry; El-Miter is gambling; El-Ansab are the stones or thorns in one’s road; and El-Aglane is the argument by sword instead of by reason. The following might well be printed in Gothic script and hung in our own “dens” and boudoirs along with Stevenson’s “Prayer.”

“When a woman says to her husband, I have never received a single benefit from you, all the good acts she may have done lose their value.”

“God detests those who show pride before their companions.”

“Go a mile to visit a sick man, two miles to reconcile a pair of quarrellers and three miles to see a holy man.”

“When you think of the faults of your neighbours, think also of your own.”

“He who salutes thee first is free from pride.”

“God hates dirtiness and disorder.”

With respect to this last, the Arab performs his ablutions with great regularity and devotion, but by contrast, curiously enough, enshrouds himself frequently in dirty, verminous rags.

The most detested sequence of events that can happen to an Arab are ranked as follows:—

I. The drunkenness which makes a fool of a man.

II. The sleep which dissipates the drunkenness.

III. And the chagrin which destroys the sleep.

The emotion has been felt by others, who cannot slip on and off the peau de chagrin as did Balzac’s hero.

The Arabs explain their abstention from wine by an act of the Prophet forbidding its use.

One day the Prophet saw, in passing, a group of young men who were making free and drinking of wine. He blessed them, saying, “Drink at your ease, you have the benediction of God.” At the end of a brief interval the Prophet, passing that way again, saw them disputing among themselves, and learned that one had been killed. Thereupon he vowed upon their heads that “wine was a curse upon them, and that not one who was given to it should hope to enter Heaven.”

Among the Arab indigènes to-day, one remarks an almost total abstention from the “wine when it is red.” Contrariwise they may frequently be seen drinking white wine, and indeed they have a great fondness for champagne,—but they are not particular about the brand, the label on the bottle means nothing to them, so long as it is a gaudy one, and so, like many Americans, they drink something which they think is champagne, and is just as “heady.”

Arab hospitality is famous, their very manner of life, even to-day, as in olden times, makes it a sort of compulsory tenet of their creed.

Never ask an Arab his age; you will be disappointed if you do. The Arabs have no civil register and generally ignore their exact age, frequently reckoning only by some great event which may have happened within their memories, like the “Uncle Toms” and “Old Mammies” of “way down Souf.” With such a rule-of-thumb reckoning, you are likely to remain as much in the dark as before.

It is a belief among the Arabs that they can carry on a conversation with animals. Not all amongst them are thus accomplished, but the speech of animals, they say, can be learned, and many of their head men know it. They share this belief with other Orientals; but there is no proof that they have learned their lessons as well as did Garner in his attempts to acquire “monkey talk.” The Arabs, too, are superstitious. They believe in the evil eye, and they object most decidedly and vociferously if you point your finger at them; also, they wear charms and amulets against disease and disaster.

They used to object to the camera man and the artist, but to-day, since they have come to learn that you carry away with you no actual part of themselves, only an impression, their attitude has changed.

The Arab warrior must have ten qualities, or he is déclassé in the favour of all other Arabs.

I. The courage of a cock.

II. The painstaking of a chicken.

III. The heart of a lion.

IV. The brusqueness of a wild boar.

V. The tricks of a fox.

VI. The prudence of a hedgehog.

VII. The swiftness of a wolf.

VIII. The resignation of a dog.

IX. The hand always open.

X. The sword always drawn, and one sole speech for friend or foe.

The Arab warrior, save as he now serves France, has disappeared, but his precepts were good ones for a soldier.

The Arabs’ regard for womankind has often been misunderstood and misstated. Not all Mussulmans have the same noble regard for womankind. The Turk and the Persian is notably a tyrant in his home; and, among the Arabs, the Bedouin is frequently a brute towards his wives and daughters; but the conventional Arab-Berberisé is quite compassionate and liberal in his views and treatment of the female members of his family.

“Auprès de Dieu, le maître du monde, une fille vaut un garçon.”

Thus say the Arabs, but in practice it’s all the other way. The boy stays with the family and adds his strength and talents to his father’s tribe; but the daughter, arriving at the marrying age, which comes early with the Arabs, leaves not only her family, but the ancestral douar or community, perhaps even the tribe, and goes where her new master pleases.

In a word, the boy is another sword or brain for his family’s interests, whilst the daughter goes to augment those who may, perhaps, at some future time, be enemies of her parents.

From this one judges that with the Arabs, as with many other exotic nations, the birth of a son brings real joy to the parental roof-tree; but that of a girl merely a lukewarm expression of gratification, or perhaps nothing

more than a disappointed resignation. If it is a boy that is new-born, the parents are congratulated with: “God has made you a good gift!” If it is a girl: “May you be as happy as possible!” is considered as all that is needful, a sort of commiserating congratulation this, and the father perforce responds ordinarily: “Zaddat di nââla!” (“It is my sorrow.”)

Once the child is born, the sex determined, the “rejoicings,” properly called, do not differ in one case from the other, for the Arab believes profoundly in Mohammed’s diction—“These are the innocents and the Fête des Anges must be the same in each case.”

Seven days after the birth, the baby daughter’s Fête de Naîssance takes place in presence of the Caïd, the marabout, parents and friends. The women cry and sob joyfully, and dance with the abandon of a dervish, and the screech and roll of the guellal and the flute make things hideous for one who has no special responsibility bound up in the event. The men, too, give themselves over to the dance quite as vigorously and quite as gracefully as do the women, and a feast—all birth and wedding celebrations end with a feast—terminates the great event so far as a general participation goes. The eternal couscous is the pièce de résistance, with dates, raisins, figs, honey, butter and milk in addition.

For a choice of names for their little daughter, the Arab parents, almost without exception, choose one of the following:—

Sometimes the child is given the name of some female friend of the family, who agrees to act as godmother through the early years of its life, and is obliged to spend a relatively large sum of money in supplying a baptismal present, as do godmothers the world over. The boy under the same circumstances would probably have been named Mohammed or Achmed and have done with it.

After the actual naming ceremony the great bracelet talismans are put on the girl-child’s arms, and a little later a similar decoration will be given her for her neck. If the parents are rich their children are often rudely sent away to be nourished and given strength beneath the shade of some Saharan oasis, not too far away but that they can be visited once a year. The nurse who guards the children in their desert home is called the second mother, but she is a nurse pure and simple and bears no relation to the godmother.

The child is carried pick-a-back by day, by one or another of its mothers, clumsily swathed in a none too clean-looking woollen cloth during the first few months, and at night is securely stowed away in a fig-leaf basket which is hung from the tent poles, a cradle which is soft, flexible and cheap.

In time light foods, such as the milk of goats, cows, or camels is given the child, and as early as possible it is told or shown how to take a bath—and made to take it whenever the idea enters the parents’ heads.

For dress, the girl is clothed as becomes the station and wealth of her parents; her ears are pierced in two or three places, but as no jewelry is worn by infants the holes are kept open by silk cords.

The home life of these early years is very much en famille among the Arabs of the countryside, with horses, oxen, and cows as dwellers under the same roof.

As soon as possible the child is taught to pray according to the religion of its parents. Each prayer is preceded by an ablution. Truly the Mohammedan religion is a cleanly and purifying one!

The practical education of an Arab girl commences when she is shown how to cut and fit a burnous (nothing of the tailor-made or Paris mode about this to make it difficult; any one who can handle a pair of scissors can do the thing), to sew a tent-covering together, and the thousand and one domestic accomplishments of women everywhere, not forgetting spinning and weaving.

In the poorer families, those who live in mean, ragged tents, not the “Great Tents,” the child is most likely first set to doing the cooking. At the age of fourteen or fifteen, she begins to “take notice” of the youth of the other sex, meanwhile partaking of the fare of the family board only when there are no strangers present. During visits to friends and neighbours, or to the marabouts, or at fêtes given in her honour, the young Arab girl of whatever social rank is closely chaperoned, always accompanied by her mother. The

daughters of the “Great Tents” are veiled from their tenth year onwards, only the poor remain with their visage uncovered. Music is a part of the early education of the Arab girl. She learns to dance, yatagan in hand; and to play the bendir, a sort of Spanish tambourin, and the touiba, a similar instrument, somewhat smaller and less sonorous.

At an early age, too, she learns the rudiments of the arts of coquetry. She puts rouge (zerkoun) on her face, and blacks her eyelids with koheul; and, finally, colours the tips of her toes and fingers a coppery red with henna. She has her wrists and ankles tattooed in bands or bracelets; and paints beauty spots, a star or a crude imitation of a fly, on her cheeks or forehead. By this time she is thought to be a ravishing beauty.

Even the poorest of Arab families guard their daughter’s honour with the greatest circumspection, never a doubtful word or phrase is uttered in her presence. She is brought up in the greatest purity of atmosphere. Should there be any doubts as to this, her spouse, even on the marriage day, will send her back to her parents dressed in a white burnous—with no thanks. Dishonour can be punished by death. The Cadi is the referee in all matters of dispute or doubt of this nature, and his word is final.

Among the wealthiest tribes the daughters are often promised in marriage at the age of four or five, and frequently they marry between ten and fifteen. Indeed they must marry at an early age or people say unkind things about them. In the Sahara the rich marry three or four wives, the poor one, rarely two. One may not marry but one wife in any one year.

The Arab proverbs concerning women are many and mostly complimentary.

“The quarrelsome wife is for her spouse a heavy burden, but a happy wife is as a crown of gold.”

The Arab poet says of his chosen type of female beauty:—