triding triumphantly
up our path with a partridge dangling from his hand--a red-legged
Frenchman, which we hung long. This acquisition to the larder had to be
applauded perforce, in spite of its being shot sitting, and on some one
else's acres. As luck would have it, S`lam's great bullet, about the size
commonly used for big game, had gone through its head: he naively
explained the advantages of shooting birds through the head. But I think
he was a fair shot. Most Riffis are.

I suppose that the Riff tribe is more or less an anomaly. Think, if you
can, of a clan or a tribe who are pirates, wreckers, who encourage
slavery, who count the vendetta an admirable custom, who have no laws, no
governors, who acknowledge as their supreme head a Sultan who has never
from all ages ventured within their borders--a tribe who have, as it has
been said, "no fear, no anything, save and excepting their faith in One
God and Mohammed as his Prophet, their own daggers, a Martini-Henry if
they can get one, and failing that, a ten-foot-long Riff gun,
coral-studded, ivory-butted, brass-bound, and deadly to handle"--a people
who live in a country without roads, _and all within a few hours of
Gibraltar_: have they their parallel, except among adventurers in the Far
East, and those but a few upon distant seas?

[Illustration: TWO WOMEN FROM THE RIFF COUNTRY.

[_To face p. 172._]

To explore the unknown Riff country would be interesting indeed. No book
has been written upon it except from hearsay, and no European has
penetrated across its length and breadth. The Riffis want no foreign
interlopers among their sacred hills, and would "knife" the first who
showed his face. It is but two days' journey eastwards from Tetuan, this
select and exclusive country, and it extends about a hundred and fifty
miles, with a population, it is reported, of one hundred and fifty
thousand souls. Strange to think that no European pioneer, nor
gentleman-rover, has ever exploited the Riff.

The law of the vendetta, is the law and the ten commandments of the
Riffi, which, if he fail to keep, renders him in the eyes of his
country-folk damned to all eternity, to be ostracised among men. A widow
will teach her baby-son to shoot, and studiously prepare him for his one
great duty, that as early as possible he may put a bullet into the
murderer of his father. And thus the feud is nourished. Even the
great-great-grandson of a man who has taken a life years upon years ago