But time when on a journey in the desert is too
precious to allow of much of it heing spent in
admiring the view, however beautiful it may b e , so
when our cigarettes were finished the camel was
fetched and loaded up, and we took the road again
towards south.
I soon became initiated into some of the vagaries
of the desert Arabs. Shortly after we had
started Aissa noticed a man approaching us from
the south, driving a couple of camels, on to one of
which were hung head downwards some half-dozen
fowls all tied together by their legs in a bunch.
Aissa suggested that a fowl, if it could be bought
cheaply, would be a very welcome addition to our
larder, and, on my assenting, he commenced at once,
though the man was still a good two hundred yards
away, to enter into negotiations.
‘ Where are you from ? ’ bawled Aissa.
' Shegga,’ came the faint reply.
‘ How much for the fowls ? ’
‘ Two francs and a half each.
‘ Ah ! wah ! ’ in great disgust; ‘ I will give you a
franc and a half.’
And so the bargaining went on at full bawl
without intermission. These leather-lunged Arabs
on a still day can make their voices carry an extraordinary
distance. I have myself seen in the Aures
mountains two men carrying on an animated argument
from the top of the hills on either side of a
valley which appeared to me to be considerably over
half a mile across. And yet these ‘ two blest sirens ’
(I am quoting, I believe, from Milton) seemed to
experience no difficulty whatever in making themselves
understood.
By the time that we and the owner of the fowls
had met a price had been agreed upon, and Aissa
was at liberty to make his choice from the clucking
bundle.
He selected one, paid for it, and was proceeding
to hang it up head downwards and squawking from
our camel, when I interfered and insisted that it
should first be killed.
The wretched bird was handed over to El Haj,
who, drawing his long sheath knife such as every
Arab carries, proceeded to perform the hallal—that
is, to cut the fowl’s throat—muttering ‘ in the name
of Allah ’ as he did so, so as to make him lawful
eating for a Moslem.
Shortly after this we crossed a little stream,
which in dry weather represents the Wad Jidi. This
little brook, however, when much rain has fallen in
the mountains where it takes its rise, becomes a
huge and utterly impassable morass several miles
in width, which completely cuts off Biskra from the
desert to the south, and, as it remains in this condition
for sometimes considerably over a week, occasions
the greatest inconvenience to travellers.
After crossing the Wad Jidi we passed, on a
small mound a short distance beyond, the borj or
caravanserai of Saada, the first on the road from
Biskra to Tougourt.
These caravanserais, which are placed at the
distance of a short day’s journey apart from each
other along the caravan routes, are built for the
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