rare taste
of mutton. When Salam's friend came starving to Cape Juby, Sidi Mackenzie
had given him bread. The hungry man ate some and at once became violently
ill, his stomach could not endure such solid fare. Having no milk in the
fort, they managed to keep him alive on rice-water. It would appear that
the Saharowi can easily live on milk for a week, and with milk and cheese
can thrive indefinitely, as indeed could most other folk, if they cared to
forswear luxury and try.

[Illustration: ON THE ROAD TO ARGAN FOREST]

The little party was travelling with some hundreds of sheep and goats,
which were being tended a little way off by the children, and, large
though their flocks seemed, they were in truth sadly reduced by the
drought that had driven one and all to the North. The Saharowi explained
to Salam that all the wandering Arabs were trekking northwards in search
of land that had seen the rain; and that their path was strewn with the
skeletons of animals fallen by the way. These nomads carried their wives
and little ones, together with tents and household impedimenta, on the
camels, and walked on foot with the grown children in charge of the
flocks. The sheep they had sold to the butcher were in fair condition, and
fetched from four to five shillings in English money, or the equivalent of
this sum in goods, for when a Saharowi approaches civilised lands he is
generally in need of some of the products of civilisation, or thinks he
is, though, at need, he manages excellently well without them.

Among the miscellaneous gathering that the Tuesday market had attracted to
Hanchen I noticed a small company of acrobats from the Sus, and a medicine
man of fierce aspect, who sat by himself under a rough tent, muttering
charms and incantations, and waiting for Allah to send victims. This
wonder-worker had piercing eyes, that seemed to examine the back of your
head, long matted hair and a beard to match. He wore a white djellaba and
a pair of new slippers, and was probably more dangerous than any disease
he aided and abetted.

For the amusement of the people who did not care for acrobatic feats and
stood in no need of the primitive methods of the physician, there was a
story-teller, who addressed a somewhat attenuated circle of phlegmatic
listeners, and a snake-charmer who was surrounded by children. Sidi ben
Aissa undoubtedly kept the snakes--spotted leffas from the Sus--from
hurting his follower, but not even the saint cou