And so the pleasant visit wore on. Each day we did something different, each day we had enormous meals until finally I was obliged to leave. Looking back on the visit the thing which strikes me the most is the complete lack of fuss during the whole of my stay. Everything was done quite haphazardly and yet without a hitch. I suppose it is the effect of centuries of such existence which remains as a background and which is carried on generation after generation. A few modern inventions have appeared which facilitate things a bit, but otherwise the same life is led with exactly the same ideas as it was twelve hundred years ago, and it seems difficult to see any radical change ever taking place. In this mode life runs smoothly for the Arabs; complications do not trouble them, so why change? 3. _A Week-end with a Marabout_ The Marabout of Kourdane asked me to spend a week-end with him to discuss the possibilities of organizing a moufflon shoot in the Djbel Amour. I was interested in the prospects of getting a moufflon, but still more interested to see Kourdane. Situated in the Sahara some fifty kilometers from Laghouat, at the foot of the Djebel Amour Range, this country home of _marabouts_ was created by a Frenchwoman known as Madame Aurélie, whose maiden name was Aurélie Picard, the daughter of a gendarme. She had met the Marabout of Aïn Mahdi at Bordeaux when he had been exiled during the insurrection of 1870. She married him in France, and when he was allowed to return to Algeria she came too, and became a great personage in the country. At his death she married his brother, and continued as lady of this desolate area, loved and respected by all. Finally the second husband died too, and she remained on alone for a while in the wonderful house she had built. She is still alive, but she rarely returns to the scenes of her greatness for two reasons; in the first place, the present _marabouts_ are not quite the saints they should be, and secondly, they are all a little jealous of her reputation.