n a second earthen pot or vase, whose bottom, pierced like a
colander with holes, fits like a cover upon that in which the meat is
boiling. The steam cooks the grains, which are afterward served upon a
platter, with the meat on top and the soup poured over. All travelers
agree that, when you do not witness the preparation, couscoussou is a
toothsome and attractive dish, fit to be set beside the maccaroni of
Rossini.

[Illustration: BOU-KTEUN.]

On the plateau outside the douar we find the cemetery, with its tombs;
for the Arab, content to sleep under tissue while he lives, must needs
sleep under mason-work after he is dead. Under the koubba, or dome,
is seen a sarcophagus covered with a crimson pall, the tomb of a dead
marabout: banners of yellow or green silk, the testimony of so many
pilgrimages to Mecca, hang over the dead. In the graveyard round about
are tombstones roughly sculptured, and the stone turbans indicating
the cranium of a Mussulman; the Arab, again, after building his
house of camel's hair, ordering his last turban to be woven by the
stone-mason!

We pass along a sterile country, with chalky rocks cropping from the
ground and making our way increasingly difficult. All is dry as a
lime-basket. The climate here, completely wanting in the sense of a
just medium, knows no resource between the utter desiccation of all
the water-courses in summer and an outpouring in winter which carries
away trees, crops and arable earth, presenting the farmer with a
result of boulders and sand. The rocks sound beneath our animals' feet
for an hour or two: we dip into a ravine and attain Bou-Kteun, our
first Kabylian town.

It is night, and we invoke the hospitality of the village chief,
called by the Kabyles the amin. Our prayers are not refused. The
amin receives the strangers, not so much from a feeling of social
etiquette, of which he knows little, as from his religion, which
commands him to receive the guest as the messenger of God. He comes
to the threshold, kisses our hands without servility, waits on us at a
supper which he is too polite to share, and presents us with a prayer
at our bedside. Bou-Kteun, situated halfway up the "Red Plateau,"
guards the pass called the Gates of Iron. It is an uninteresting
village, the official house being alone respectable amidst a town of
huts. As the amin accompanies us a little way outside the burgh, we
remark, among the young orchards, stumps of olive and fig trees sawn
awa