ingularity of expression cannot replace the inspiration, the energy, and
even the delicacy of sentiment often found among the nomads:

"The country remains a desert, the days of heat are ended, the trees of
our land have borne the attack of Summer, that is my grief.
After it was so magnificent to behold, its leaves are fallen, one by one,
before my eyes.
But I do not covet the verdure of a cypress; my sorrow has for its cause
a woman, whose heart has captivated mine.
I will describe her clearly; you will know who she is; since she has gone
my heart fails me.
Cheika of the eye constantly veiled, daughter of Mouloud, thy love has
exhausted me.
I have reached a point where I walk dizzily like one who has drunken and
is drunk; still am I fasting; my heart has abandoned me.
Thy thick hair is like the ostrich's plumes, the male ostrich, feeding in
the depressions of the dunes; thy eyebrows are like two
_nouns_ [Arab letters] of a Tlemcen writing.
Thy eyes, my beautiful, are like two gleaming gun barrels, made at
Stamboul, city defiant of Christians.
The cheek of Cherikha is like the rose and the poppy when they open under
the showers.
Thy mouth insults the emerald and the diamond; thy saliva is a remedy
against the malady; without doubt it is that which has
cured me[1]."

[1] Joly, Poesie Arnaduno chez les Nomades Algeriennes. Revue Africaine,
XLV, pp. 217-219. Alger, 1901, 8vo.

To finish with the modern literature of the northwest of Africa, I should
mention a style of writings which played a grand role some five centuries
ago, but that sort is too closely connected with those composing the poems
on the Spanish Moors, and of them I shall speak later. It remains now to
but enumerate the enigmas found in all popular literature, and the satiric
sayings attributed to holy persons of the fifteenth century, who, for
having been virtuous and having possessed the gift of miracles, were none
the less men, and as such bore anger and spite. The most celebrated of all
was Sidi Ahmed ben Yousuf, who was buried at Miliana. By reason of the
axiom, "They lend but to the rich," they attributed to him all the
satirical sayings which are heard in the villages and among the tribes of
Algeria, of which, perhaps, he did pronounce some