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injunction, but on the "Souna" or record of the Prophet's "custom" or
usages, which forms an authoritative precedent in Moslem ritual. So far
goes the Moslem exegesis. In reality, of course, the Moslem
blood-sacrifice comes, by way of the Semitic ritual, from far beyond and
behind it, and the belief that the Sultan's prosperity for the coming
year depends on the animal's protracted agony seems to relate the
ceremony to the dark magic so deeply rooted in the mysterious tribes
peopling North Africa long ages before the first Phoenician prows had
rounded its coast.

Between the Black Guard and the tents, five or six horses were being led
up and down by muscular grooms in snowy tunics. They were handsome
animals, as Moroccan horses go, and each of a different colour, and on
the bay horse was a red saddle embroidered in gold, on the piebald a
saddle of peach-colour and silver, on the chestnut, grass-green
encrusted with seed-pearls, on the white mare purple housings, and
orange velvet on the grey. The Sultan's band had struck up a shrill
hammering and twanging, the salute of the Black Guard continued at
intervals, and the caparisoned steeds began to rear and snort and drag
back from the cruel Arab bits with their exquisite _niello_
incrustations. Some one whispered that these were His Majesty's
horses--and that it was never known till he appeared which one he would
mount.

Presently the crowd about the tents thickened, and when it divided
again there emerged from it a grey horse bearing a motionless figure
swathed in blinding white. Marching at the horse's bridle, lean brown
grooms in white tunics rhythmically waved long strips of white linen to
keep off the flies from the Imperial Presence, and beside the motionless
rider, in a line with his horse's flank, rode the Imperial
Parasol-bearer, who held above the sovereign's head a great sunshade of
bright green velvet. Slowly the grey horse advanced a few yards before
the tent; behind rode the court dignitaries, followed by the musicians,
who looked, in their bright scant caftans, like the slender music-making
angels of a Florentine fresco.

The Sultan, pausing beneath his velvet dome, waited to receive the
homage of the assembled tribes. An official, riding forward, drew bridle
and called out a name. Instantly there came storming across the plain a
wild cavalcade of tribesmen, with rifles slung across their shoulders,
pistols and cutlasses in their belts, and twists of c