itizens, the bands playing, perhaps, "_Partant pour
l'Italie_." The migration of quails takes place at this season, and,
with a good retrieving spaniel, hundreds may be shot. But they lie
very close, and require a dog to put them up. They are by no means
easy to shoot, and require snipe shot. They lie in the young corn,
which is very thick and thriving here as on the field of Waterloo. As
I had put up No. 6 shot by mistake, and had no spaniel, I bagged but
few comparatively, some twenty. A great number of these quails are
sent alive to England, and on board the Italian steamer from Sicily
there were about twenty large cages, containing about fifty live
quails each, which they told me were going to Britain; they had been
caught like larks by the net.

By the way, I had here a proof of Arab honesty, refreshing as an
oasis in the desert. Riding back through a village to Goutelle (where
I was staying, previously to embarking for Malta), I dropped my
powder-flask, unawares to myself. I had not passed two minutes when
I heard a loud halloo, and turning, perceived an Arab running at full
speed to me with my powder-flask. Now, powder is what Arabs prize
more than gold even, precious stones, or tobacco, yet they might
easily have taken this without my knowing anything. On my offering
him coin worth about sixpence, the Arab, in broken _lingua Franca_,
made me comprehend he preferred a few charges of powder, which I
immediately gave, and which he carefully wrapped up in some old
paper. I record this, because at Tunis and elsewhere, we hear of
nothing but Arab dishonesty and thieving propensities. Is it true,
and this exception a proof of the rule? or are all these stories
false? It is hard to say.

They are a curious race, apparently a mass of contradictions. One
thing is certain; you must not treat them in the _du haut en bas_
style. They are very proud, and naturally regard every Christian _ipso
facto_ as individually inferior to the Mussulman, more specially in
the far interior, where Christians have not as yet penetrated. A----
and his party had started for Kef, _malgre_ my dissuasions. The fact
of a man going to explore Punic ruins with one going to discover
Mauritanian lions, was, to my mind, like mixing oil and vinegar, or
fire and water, or eating meat with your knife, or soup with a fork,
or taking two helpings of soup, or anything else incongruous. D----
was to be their interpreter. The Arabs there told them that a lio