s it must
come--that an effete and inadequate people goes to the wall, and
civilized blood occupies their room, it may bring good, but that good
will be tinged with regret--certainly in the eyes of those selfish
mortals to whom one country, neither wire-fenced nor scored by railways,
nor swept nor garnished, but coloured to-day by the smoke of many
thousand years, still offers palmy days. Thus giving thanks to Allah for
things as they are, after the manner of the country, we jogged along,
looking out for a halting-ground: it was between twelve and one o'clock,
and time to stretch our legs.

The river and some oleander-bushes, with green lawns between them,
offered all we wanted. Cadour took off his brown jellab, and spread it
for us to sit upon. There we lunched and waited for an hour. Some oxen
were ploughing close to us, driven in a desultory way by a figure clad in
a pair of once white drawers, and a once white tunic with a leather belt.
All which this husbandman wanted being corn enough to supply himself, and
no surplus to fall into the sheikh's hands, the field was naturally
small. A well-to-do farmer might rise to growing a little maize or cummin
or millet or fenugreek for exportation, perhaps some broad-beans,
chick-peas, or canary-seed; but the duties are heavy. Wheat and barley
have been forbidden export: the infidel shall not eat bread of the true
believer's corn.

Our Arabic at that time was _nil_; there was no chance of a word with the
ploughman unless through Mohammed. Such a mere scratch of a furrow as he
made, into which the grain would be casually thrown, with never a harrow
or substitution for one! Allah provides, and there is no reason to
interfere with his arrangements: "B`ism Allah." Thus will the fields be
reaped, the corn ground, the bread made, the loaf eaten, with the same
old invocation muttered beforehand: "B`ism Allah" (In the name of God).

The two little oxen drew the patriarchal plough, hewn out of a log of
wood, and shod with an iron point, entirely by means of their heads, to
which it was fastened with dried grass-fibres across their foreheads and
round their horns, making a sort of large straw bonnet on top of all
which they held high in the air or sideways, with expressions of extreme
disgust. In the middle of the field, yoked by the bonnet to a second
plough and a fellow-ox, the companion had inconsiderately lain down, to
the great inconvenience of its foolish partner, which remained