tively warlike and peaceful--_razzia_ and _fantasia_. The latter
is applied to a game of horsemanship, used to express joy or to honor
a distinguished friend. A spirited fantasia is organized by the guests
of the agha on returning to Akbou. Twenty of the best-mounted horsemen
having gone on before, and being completely lost to sight in the
whirlwind of dust created by their departure, all of a sudden
reappear. Menacing their host and his companions like an army, they
gallop up, their bornouses flying and their weapons flashing, until
at a few paces they discharge their long guns under the bodies of the
horses opposite, and take flight like a covey of birds. Loading
as they retire and quickly forming, again they dash to the charge,
shouting, galloping, and shooting among the legs of their host's fine
horses: this sham attack is repeated a score or two of times, up
to the door of the agha's house. The Bedouins, in their picturesque
expression, are making the powder talk. Finer horsemanship can nowhere
be seen. Their horses, accustomed to the exercise, enter into the game
with spirit, and the riders, secure in their castellated saddles, sit
with ease as they turn, leap or dance on two feet. Used, too, from
infancy to the society of their mares, they move with them in a degree
of unity, vigor and boldness which the English horseman never attains.
The Arab's love for his horse is not only the pride of the cavalier:
it is an article of faith, and the Prophet comprehended the close
unity between his nation and their beasts when he said, "The blessings
of this world, up to the day of judgment, shall be suspended to the
locks which our horses wear between their eyes."

[Illustration: GEORGE CHRISTY IN AFRICA.]

Truly the Oriental idea of hospitality has its advantages--on the side
of the obliged party. This haughty ruler, on the simple stress of
a letter from a French commandant, has made himself our servant and
teased his brain for devices to amuse us. His chief cook precedes us
to his birthplace at Chellata, to arrange a sumptuous Arab supper.
After a ride made enervating by the simoom, we descend at the arcaded
and galleried Moorish house where Ben-Ali-Cherif was born, and are
visited by the sheikh of the college which the agha maintains. It is
a strange, peaceful, cloistered scene, consecrated to study and
hospitality. Chellata, white and silent, sleeps in the gigantic shadow
of the rock Tisibert, and in its graveyard, amon