Si Sayah Laroussi, who, according to the legend on his visiting-card, is grand marabout of the Tidjania, chevalier of the Legion of Honor, and commander of the Order of Nichan Iftikhar, is a very important person indeed in the northeastern Sahara, exercising political as well as religious authority. His residence, which fronts on a spacious square in the center of the town, is a substantial whitewashed building in the Moorish style, the entrance, with its horseshoe arches and bands of vividly colored tiles, being faintly suggestive of some of the palaces in Fez and Marrákesh. Si Sayah, an impressive and colorful figure in his vivid green turban, his caftan of pale pink silk, and his snowy burnous, on the breast of which gleamed the cross of the Legion of Honor, received us with some show of ceremony, surrounded by the officials of his miniature court, in the audience-chamber, a finely proportioned room whose decorations combined Oriental taste with European tawdriness. After serving us with Arab coffee, some native cakes made from sickly sweet almond paste, and cigarettes, and displaying with much pride a series of photographs of Mecca, to which he had made the _haj_, Si Sayah conducted us through the gardens, which contained several gazelles and a flock of pink-legged flamingos, to the really impressive mosque which was being erected over the tomb of the late grand marabout, who, if I mistake not, was our host’s father. I was particularly interested in the architecture of the marabout (I am referring now to the building, not to the man), for its doorways, instead of having the Moorish horseshoe arches which are characteristic of religious edifices in French North Africa, were high and rectangular, with a curious serrated border, suggesting, without actually resembling, the doorways of the Temple at Karnak, in Upper Egypt. Upon my expressing surprise that a town as small as Guemar could afford so large and beautiful a place of worship, Si Sayah explained that the funds for its erection had been subscribed by the pious throughout North Africa, adding that generous contributions had been made even by unbelievers. Taking the hint, I begged the privilege of making a modest donation to the building-fund, which was promptly accepted in the name of Allah.