ervous, I wandered among some plantations
of olives and false peppers, where the domes of the tombs floated like
white bubbles on the foliage. Here an Arab beckoned to me, and told me
he had been watching me for some time--for he was an English medical
missionary in disguise--and warned me that these gardens and shrines
were quite the wrong place to wander in alone. It appears that only a
few days since the flame of insurrection flashed down the bazaar,
licked up a few French soldiers who happened to be there, and had
almost got a hold before the garrison appeared and doused it. He took
me to his house, with its windows heavily barred, for there his
predecessor had been murdered. (If this could happen at the
starting-place for Lake Tchad, then let the idea go.)

From the flat roof of the doctor's house I smelt the dung of ages,
fought with legions of flies, and looked down on a large quadrangle of
hay and stable muck, where camels had carefully folded themselves on
the ground, and chewed reflectively, their eyes half closed; and large
drowsy asses mechanically fanned their ears at the loathly swarms. The
missionary surmised that the caravanserai below was the perfect
reflection of one we had heard more about, which was once at Bethlehem.
The square was enclosed with flat-roofed stables, and it being a busy
time they were all occupied. The first one, immediately below us, was
filled with a family of Kabyles, which consisted chiefly of a
magnificent virago of a wife, tattooed, with a fine gold ring in her
nostrils, who seemed to have a trying life with her mild and
contemplative old husband. She had more children than one could count
without giving the matter that close attention which might be
misinterpreted. She cradled them in the manger every night. Loud as her
voice was, though, I could almost hear the old man smile as he walked
away from her. They had two contemptuous camels who never lifted an
eyelid when she raised her voice to them, but chewed calmly on, with
faces turned impassively towards the New Jerusalem of camels, where
viragoes are not; and several resigned asses who appeared to have
handed their souls back to their Maker, because souls are but extra
trammels in this place of sorrow.

Next door to them was a regular tenant who bred goats, and fed them out
of British biscuit-tins. Beyond them the stable was occupied by a party
of swarthy ruffians who had arrived with a cargo of esparto grass. In
the far c