the Sultan's protected subjects. "The men who have protection between
this place and Djedida," declared their spokesman, sorrowfully, "have no
fear of Allah or His Prophet. They brawl in our markets and rob us of our
goods. They insult our houses,[14] they are without shame, and because of
their protection our lives have become very bitter."

"Have you been to your Basha?" I asked the headman.

"I went bearing a gift in my hand, O Highly Favoured," replied the
headman, "and he answered me, 'Foolish farmer, shall I bring the Sultan to
visit me by interfering with these rebels against Allah who have taken the
protection from Nazarenes?' And then he cursed me and drove me forth from
his presence. But if you will give protection to us also we will face
these misbegotten ones, and there shall be none to come between us."

[Illustration: A VILLAGE AT DUKALA]

I could do no more than deliver messages of consolation to the poor
tribesmen, who sat in a semicircle, patient in the quivering heat. The old
story of goodwill and inability had to be told again, and I never saw men
more dejected. At the moment of leave-taking, however, I remembered that
we had some empty mineral-water bottles and a large collection of
gunmaker's circulars, that had been used as padding for a case of
cartridges. So I distributed the circulars and empty bottles among the
protection hunters, and they received them with wonder and delight. When I
turned to take a last look round, the pages that had pictures of guns
were being passed reverently from hand to hand; to outward seeming the
farmers had forgotten their trouble. Thus easily may kindnesses be wrought
among the truly simple of this world.

The market of Sidi B'noor is famous for its sales of slaves and
horses,[15] but I remember it best by its swarm of blue rock-pigeons and
sparrow-hawks, that seemed to live side by side in the walls surrounding
the saint's white tomb. For reasons best known to themselves they lived
without quarrelling, perhaps because the saint was a man of peace. Surely
a sparrow-hawk in our island would not build his nest and live in perfect
amity with pigeons. But, as is well known, the influence of the saintly
endures after the flesh of the saint has returned to the dust whence it
came.

The difference between Dukala and R'hamna, two adjacent provinces, is very
marked. All that the first enjoys the second lacks. We left the fertile
lands for great stony plains, wind-swept,