My American friend informed me that golf has changed the habits of the American business man. It appears that since Columbus arrived this individual has never taken any exercise; he has sat in his office glued to his desk from dewy morn till long after sunset. All that is over, and in a moment. At 3 p.m. he now furtively affixes to his office door a notice, “Back in ten minutes,” and is off to the American Sandwich. Saturday is a whole, not a half, holiday; and Sunday has become a day of especial unrest. If in the twinkling of an eye such a slave of ingrained habits may find salvation, need we despair of the poor Arab, or worry ourselves about his pedigree? To all appearance he is usually short of a job; his posture of seemingly permanent repose is explained to me as one of waiting till his dates are ripe. Golf will alter his whole attitude of mind as of body. Local conditions are most favourable. The Sahara contains the finest sand-bunkers in the world. The creation of greens is merely a matter of sinking Artesian wells, a laudable process on which the French Government is already embarked, but with no full appreciation of its real significance. Temporary club-houses of galvanized iron would meet all requirements for the present. At once the Arab’s (I must continue to call him the Arab, in spite of my French authors) distinctive dress would go. No one who has not put it on can realize in what a cuirass, in what folds, he is involved. As he is he could never hope to drive a decent ball. Array him in a Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers and putties (I observe that his French conquerors are greatly affecting putties) and his aloofness disappears. At a stroke he enters the world-movement; Colonel Bogey will oust the Lord Okba; and when Hadji ben Mohammed ben Yakoub comes over to represent the Biskra and North Sahara Golf Club at St. Andrews may I be there to see him win. [Illustration: OLD BISKRA] A little way further south than the garden of Count Landon, on the Touggourt road lie the scattered native hamlets known to the French as _La Vieille Biskra_, the crumbling houses of a ragged population. Here is the very _ne plus ultra_ of Arab untidiness. But the play of sunbeams through the palm trees’ grateful shade turns squalor into beauty. Arab villages are often half in ruins. Their irregular construction of blocks of dried mud gives them the aspect of the homes of animals rather than of men,—the creation perhaps of some gigantic ant. When it rains they not infrequently fall down. And the labour of rebuilding is not lightly undertaken.