In contrast to this imposing guard of honor, the traveler minces along
on a dumb, timid mule, who smells the ground in a sordid and vulgar
manner, and is guided by a pitiful rope bridle. Such are the hackneys
and the guides, engaged on the recommendation of the commandant of
Constantina, who undertake to carry us to Setif and on to Bou-Kteun
in Kabylia.

[Illustration: THE WASHERWOMEN.]

Setif, the ancient metropolis of this part of Mauritania, and
celebrated for a brave defence against the invading Saracens, is now
the healthiest spot occupied by the French in all Algeria. It lies on
a great table a mile above the sea, is fortified, and has four good
streets, but pays for its salubrity by the extreme outspokenness of
the climate. It is subject to snow for six months, and is enveloped
in a cloud of dust the other six. It is in the midst of a great
grain-producing country, and is famed for its market, held every
Sabbath. The surrounding folk dress for market, instead of dressing
for Sunday, and exhibit the whitest of bornouses above the dustiest of
legs as they sit crooning over trays of eggs or onions, brought far on
foot through the powdery roads.

As we leave Setif we are overtaken by the lumbering stage-coach, which
plunges and jolts over the road to Sibou-Areridj--a coach apparently
about the age of the carriage of General Washington, for Algeria is
the infirmary of all the worn-out French diligences. Sibou-Areridj is
reached and passed, and a few miles farther on is encountered an Arab
douar, or assemblage of tents forming a tribal fraction. This woven
village, although we have attained the limits of Kabylia, reminds us
that we have not yet reached the Kabylian abodes: an Arab lives in
a tent in all localities outside the great cities--a Kabyle, never.
However poor the hut in which the Kabylian artisan starves and labors,
it must be a solid mansion founded upon the soil, and its master
must feel himself a householder. Our douar proves to be an encampment
belonging to the marabouts, or high religious orders, situated on a
large plot of ground in the ownership of the saints, and extending
up to the limits of Kabylia. Composed of a circle of tents numbering
about fifty, and exhibiting numbers of fine horses picketed near
the tent-doors, it is as fine a specimen as we shall see of the
patriarchal life inherited from the unfatherly father of Ishmael. The
pavilions are of a thick camel's hair stuff, very laborious