razzia. It was, however, as will afterwards be seen,
only the first round of the fight.
Perhaps they exaggerated the amount of their
booty. The only item which I was in any way
able to check was the ostrich feathers. I bought a
number from a man who produced a goat’s skin
nearly full of them, which he declared was his share
of what was taken on the raid, and there were over
a hundred raiders. No wonder that they were
satisfied.
"While this account of their exploit was being
given to me, the man who had been described as
having killed two of the Tawareks glanced up at the
sun to see the time, then strolled about ten paces
away, kicked off his shoes, washed his hands with a
little sand, and began to say his prayers, leaving it
to his fellow brigands to finish the description of the
raid.
That’s the Arab ‘ right through ’ ! You can
always rely upon him to adhere to the strictest letter
of the first five commandments, but no power on
earth which has yet been discovered will induce
him to pay the slightest attention to any of the
remainder.
CHAPTER VIII
T o u g o u r t , though extremely , interesting, is not a
pleasant town to stay in. The climate is about as
bad as it can be. One day it rained, the next day
the sun blazed down with a heat that was intolerable,
and then dgain the weather changed, and a
cold wind, driving clouds of sand in off the desert,
kept everyone shivering and drove them into the
covered ways of the old town. This is the winter
climate; later in the season the place becomes a
hotbed of fever.
One day I hired a mehari (trotting camel), and
rode over to Temasin, a small oasis near, to see the
village. The interest of the place lay in the fact
that it is built in the form of a Tcsar, or fortified
town, after the manner of the villages in Twat and
in other places in the Sahara. The fortifications are
still in a fair state of preservation.
Riding a mehari on an Arab saddle is an art
which requires considerable practice. You sit on a
round, plate-shaped seat, with your feet resting on
the camel’s neck in front, and a cross-shaped pummel
between your thighs. As your legs are almost horizontal
they give you little assistance in maintaining
your equilibrium, and, as the grip that you get from
the pummel is of very little use, all the balancing