The Project Gutenberg EBook of Halima And The Scorpions, by Robert Hichens

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Title: Halima And The Scorpions
1905

Author: Robert Hichens

Release Date: November 8, 2007 [EBook #23414]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HALIMA AND THE SCORPIONS ***

Produced by David Widger

HALIMA AND THE SCORPIONS

By Robert Hichens

Frederick A. Stokes Company Publishers

Copyright, 1905

In travelling about the world one collects a number of those trifles of
all sorts, usually named "curiosities," many of them worthless if it
were not for the memories they recall. The other day I was clearing out
a bureau before going abroad, and in one of the drawers I came across a
hedgehog's foot, set in silver, and hung upon a tarnished silver chain.
I picked it up in the Sahara, and here is its history.

*****

Mohammed El Aid Ben Ali Tidjani, marabout of Tamacine, is a great man in
the Sahara Desert. His reputation for piety reaches as far as Tunis
and Algiers, to the north of Africa, and to the uttermost parts of the
Southern Desert, even to the land of the Touaregs. He dwells in a sacred
village of dried mud and brick, surrounded by a high wall, pierced with
loopholes, and ornamented with gates made of palm wood, and covered with
sheets of iron. In his mansion, above the entrance of which is written
"L'Entree de Sidi Laid," are clocks innumerable, musical boxes, tables,
chairs, sofas, and even framed photographs. Negro servants bow before
him, wives, brothers, children, and obsequious hangers-on of various
nationalities, black, bronze, and _cafe au lait_ in colour, offer him
perpetual incense. Rich worshippers of the Prophet and the Prophet's
priests send him presents from afar; camels laden with barley, donkeys
staggering beneath sacks of grain, ostrich plumes, silver ornaments,
perfumes, red-eyed doves, gazelles whose tiny hoofs are decorated with
gold-leaf or painted in bright colours. The tributes laid before the
tomb of Cheikh Sidi El Hadj Ali ben Sidi El Hadj Aissa are, doubtless,
his perquisites as guardian of the saint. He dresses in silks of the
tints of the autumn leaf, and carries in