st was as friendly as the N'fiss had been on the
previous day. The track to its banks had been flat and uninteresting
enough; what good work the winter rains had done by way of weaving a
flower carpet on the plains, the summer sun had destroyed. There was a
considerable depression in the plain, though we could not notice it at the
slow pace forced upon us, and this accounted for the absence of water
between the rivers, and for the great extent of the calcareous gravel, in
which few plants could thrive. Only the _zizyphus lotus_, from whose
branches little white snails hung like flowers, seemed to find real
nourishment in the dry ground, though colocynth and wild lavender were to
be seen now and again. But by the Sheshoua River the change was very
sudden and grateful to the eye.

A considerable olive grove, whose grey-green leaves shone like silver in
the light breeze, offered shade and shelter to a large colony of doves.
There was a thriving village, with a saint's tomb for chief attraction,
and solid walls to suggest that the place does not enjoy perennial
tranquillity. But even though there are strangers who trouble these good
folk, their home could not have looked more charmingly a haunt of peace
than it did. All round the village one saw orchards of figs, apricots, and
pomegranate trees; the first with the leaves untouched by the summer heat,
the apricots just at the end of their blossoming, and the pomegranates
still in flower. In place of the dry, hard soil that was so trying to the
feet of man and beast, there were here meadows in plenty, from which the
irises had only lately died. I saw the common English dandelion growing
within stone's throw of a clump of feathery palms.

Tired after the vigil of the previous night and the long hours that had
led up to it, we reclined at our ease under the olives, determined to
spend the night at Sidi el Muktar, some fifteen or twenty miles away. From
there one can hunt the great bustard, and I had hoped to do so until I saw
the animals that were to take us to the coast. Neither the bustard nor the
gazelle, that sometimes roams Sidi el Muktar's plains, had anything to
fear from those noble creatures. The kaid alone might have pursued bird or
beast, but as his gun was innocent of powder and shot there would have
been nothing but exercise to seek.

After a two-hours' rest, given in one case more to sleep than lunch, we
moved on towards the village of Sidi el Muktar, passing som