rin considered it so handsome that he wanted the entire party to
get upon it. Still his Oriental craze!

The beast knelt down for them to strap on the boxes.

The prince enthroned himself on the animal's neck. For the sake of the
greater majesty, Tartarin got them to hoist him on the top of the hump
between two boxes, where, proud, and cosily settled down, he saluted
the whole market with a lofty wave of the hand, and gave the signal of
departure.

Thunderation! if the people of Tarascon could only have seen him!

The camel rose, straightened up its long knotty legs, and stepped out.

Oh, stupor! At the end of a few strides Tartarin felt he was losing
colour, and the heroic chechia assumed one by one its former positions
in the days of sailing in the Zouave. This devil's own camel pitched and
tossed like a frigate.

"Prince! prince!" gasped Tartarin pallid as a ghost, as he clung to the
dry tuft of the hump, "prince, let's get down. I find--I feel that I
m-m-must get off; or I shall disgrace France."

A deal of good that talk was--the camel was on the go, and nothing could
stop it. Behind it raced four thousand barefooted Arabs, waving their
hands and laughing like mad, so that they made six hundred thousand
white teeth glitter in the sun.

The great man of Tarascon had to resign himself to circumstances. He
sadly collapsed on the hump, where the fez took all the positions it
fancied, and France was disgraced.

V. The Night-watch in a Poison-tree Grove.

SWEETLY picturesque as was their new steed, our lion-hunters had to give
it up, purely out of consideration for the red cap, of course. So
they continued the journey on foot as before, the caravan tranquilly
proceeding southwardly by short stages, the Tarasconian in the van, the
Montenegrin in the rear, and the camel, with the weapons in their cases,
in the ranks.

The expedition lasted nearly a month.

During that seeking for lions which he never found, the dreadful
Tartarin roamed from douar to douar on the immense plain of the
Shelliff, through the odd but formidable French Algeria, where the old
Oriental perfumes are complicated by a strong blend of absinthe and the
barracks, Abraham and "the Zouzou" mingled, something fairy-tale-like
and simply burlesque, like a page of the Old Testament related by Tommy
Atkins.

A curious sight for those who have eyes that can see.

A wild and corrupted people whom we are civilising by teaching them our
vic