silver cord, which gave
His Highness the aspect of a Mexican general or a railway station-master
on the banks of the Danube.

This plague of a cap much puzzled the beholder; and as he timidly craved
some explanation, the prince gravely answered:

"It is a kind of headgear indispensable for travel in Algeria."

Whilst brightening up the peak with a sweep of his sleeve, he instructed
his simple companion in the important part which the military cap plays
in the French connection with the Arabs, and the terror this article of
army insignia alone has the privilege of inspiring, so that the Civil
Service has been obliged to put all its employees in caps, from the
extra-copyist to the receiver-general. To govern Algeria (the prince is
still speaking) there is no need of a strong head, or even of any head
at all. A military cap does it alone, if showy and belaced, and shining
at the top of a non-human pole, like Gessler's.

Thus chatting and philosophising, the caravan proceeded. The barefooted
porters leaped from rock to rock with ape-like screams. The guncases
clanked, and the guns themselves flashed. The natives who were passing,
salaamed to the ground before the magic cap. Up above, on the ramparts
of Milianah, the head of the Arab Department, who was out for an airing
with his wife, hearing these unusual noises, and seeing the weapons
gleam between the branches, fancied there was a revolt, and ordered the
drawbridge to be raised, the general alarm to be sounded, and the whole
town put under a state of siege. A capital commencement for the caravan!

Unfortunately, before the day ended, things went wrong. Of the black
luggage-bearers, one was doubled up with atrocious colics from having
eaten the diachylon out of the medicine-chest: another fell on the
roadside dead drunk with camphorated brandy; the third, carrier of
the travelling-album, deceived by the gilding on the clasps into the
persuasion that he was flying with the treasures of Mecca, ran off into
the Zaccar on his best legs.

This required consideration. The caravan halted, and held a council in
the broken shadow of an old fig-tree.

"It's my advice that we turn up Negro porters from this evening
forward," said the prince, trying without success to melt a cake of
compressed meat in an improved patent triple-bottomed sauce-pan. "There
is, haply, an Arab trader quite near here. The best thing to do is to
stop there, and buy some donkeys."

"No, no; no donk