saint’s tomb, with white dome rising within four white walls to stare undaunted at the fierce African sun, while the saint’s descendants in the shelter of the house live by begging from pious visitors.  Away from the fertility that marks the neighbourhood of the douars, one finds a few spare bushes, suddra, retam, or colocynth, a few lizards darting here and there, and over all a supreme silence that may be felt, even as the darkness that troubled Egypt in days of old.  The main track, not to be dignified by the name of road, is always to be discerned clearly enough, at least the Maalem is never in doubt when stray paths, leading from nowhere to the back of beyond, intersect it.

At long intervals we pass a n’zala, a square empty space surrounded by a zariba of thorn and prickly pear.  The village, a few wattled huts with conical roofs, stands by its side.  Every n’zala is a Government shelter for travellers; you may pitch your tent within the four walls, and even if you remain outside and hire guards the owners of the huts are responsible for your safety, with their worldly goods, perhaps with their lives.  I have tried the interior of the Moorish n’zalas, where all too frequently you must lie on unimagined filth, often almost within reach of camel-drivers and muleteers, who are so godly that they have no time to be clean, and I have concluded that the drawbacks outweigh the advantages.  Now I pitch my tent on some cleaner spot, and pay guards from the village to stretch their blankets under its lee and go to sleep.  If there are thieves abroad the zariba will not keep them out, and if there are no thieves a tired traveller may forget his fatigue.

On the road we meet few wayfarers, and those we encounter are full of suspicion.  Now and again we pass some country kaid or khalifa out on business.  As many as a dozen well-armed slaves and retainers may follow him, and, as a rule, he rides a well-fed Barb with a fine crimson saddle and many saddle cloths.  Over his white djellaba is a blue selham that came probably from Manchester; his stirrups are silver or plated.  He travels unarmed and seldom uses spurs—­a packing needle serves as an effective substitute.  When he has spurs they are simply spear-heads—­sharp prongs without rowels.  The presence of Unbelievers in the country of the True Faith is clearly displeasing to him, but he is nearly always diplomat enough to return my laboured greeting, though doubtless he curses me heartily enough under his breath.  His road lies from village to village, his duty to watch the progress of the harvest for his overlord.  Even the locusts are kinder than the country kaids.  But so soon as the kaid has amassed sufficient wealth, the governor of his province, or one of the high wazeers in the Sultan’s capital, will despoil him and sell his place to the highest bidder, and in the fulness of time the Sultan will send for that wazeer or governor, and treat him in similar fashion.  “Mektub,” it is written, and who shall avoid destiny?[11]