necessary they can sprint like greyhounds. When,
however, they wish to cover a long distance as
rapidly as possible, they adopt a sort of jog-trot which
they can keep up without intermission for hours, and
at this pace they will cover an extraordinary distance
in the twenty-four hours.
Sometimes we met a sheykh, or other rich Arab,
migrating northward with his family and flocks to
his summer quarters in the Tell, with his women-
kind invariably concealed from sight in basoors
huge tent-like erections formed of richly coloured
material stretched over a light framework of canes
placed upon the camels backs.
Once we met a couple of Arab falconers hunting
hares, bustard, and gazelle in the desert, and stopped
for an hour or two to join them in the sport.
On another occasion we encountered a snake-
catcher collecting the deadly homed vipers to sell to
a collector in Biskra. Armed with merely a stick,
he tackled these dangerous serpents with the utmost
confidence. These homed vipers, fortunately, are
very sluggish in their movements. If one attempted
to escape on the Arab’s approach, he immediately
pinned it to the ground by placing his stick across
the back of its neck. He thus was able to take hold
of it close behind the head, and when he had also
succeeded in taking hold of its tail besides, he had
him entirely in his power. Upon the other hand, if
the snake coiled itself up prepared to spring, he held
his burnous in front of him, and poked and teased it
until it struck at it, and then while its fangs were
entangled in the material, seized it by the fatal grip