and set them before
him with a bow. In this way you will enfold that lion-king in perfect
friendship, and he will be most useful to you, and you will be safe
from molestation by the negroes. When you go on from the Place of
Gifts, be sure you do not take the right-hand road; take the left, for
the other leads by the negro castle, which is known as the Place of
Clashing Swords, and where there are forty negro captains each over
three thousand or four thousand more. Their chief is Taram-taq.[11]
Further on than this is the home of the Simurgh.'

Having stored these things in the prince's memory, she said: 'You will
see everything happen just as I have said.' Then she escorted him a
little way; they parted, and she went home to mourn his absence.

Prince Almas, relying on the Causer of Causes, rode on to the Place of
Gifts and dismounted at the platform. Everything happened just as
Jamila had foretold; when one or two watches of the night had passed,
he saw that the open ground around him was full of such stately and
splendid animals as he had never seen before. By-and-by, they made way
for a wonderfully big lion, which was eighty yards from nose to
tail-tip, and was a magnificent creature. The prince advanced and
saluted it; it proudly drooped its head and forelocks and paced to the
platform. Seventy or eighty others were with it, and now encircled it
at a little distance. It laid its right paw over its left, and the
prince took the kerchief Jamila had given him for the purpose, and
rubbed the dust and earth from its face; then brought forward the game
he had prepared, and crossing his hands respectfully on his breast
stood waiting before it. When it wished for food he cut off pieces of
the meat and put them in its mouth. The serving lions also came near
and the prince would have stayed his hand, but the king-lion signed to
him to feed them too. This he did, laying the meat on the platform.
Then the king-lion beckoned the prince to come near and said: 'Sleep
at ease; my guards will watch.' So, surrounded by the lion-guard, he
slept till dawn, when the king-lion said good-bye, and gave him a few
of his own hairs and said: 'When you are in any difficulty, burn one
of these and I will be there.' Then it went off into the jungle.

[Illustration: PRINCE ALMAS BRINGS GAME TO THE KING LION]

Prince Almas immediately started; he rode till he came to the parting
of the ways. He remembered quite well that the right-hand way wa