As we were saying our farewells I asked Si Sayah’s permission to take his picture, explaining that I wished to use it in my next book. This so gratified him that he urged us to remain in Guemar as his guests for a few days and join him on a hunting expedition, adding that he had the finest falcons and Salukis in North Africa. The Saluki, or gazelle hound (the French erroneously call them _sloughi_), is, I should perhaps explain, peculiar to the Sahara and Arabia, where the type has been carefully bred for sport by the great sheikhs for generations, some of these dogs having pedigrees which run back for a thousand years. Though of sturdier build, the Saluki bears a strong resemblance to the Russian borzoi. They locate their quarry not by smell but by sight, amazing tales being related of their sagacity, speed, and endurance. Falconry, like coursing, has been practised in Barbary for ages, the nomad tribes of the Sahara having developed a very large type of falcon—possibly a species of eagle—which is flown at partridges, wild fowl, cranes, bustards, and even gazelles. To gallop across the desert as the guest of the grand marabout of the Tidjania “astride a steed of the Prophet’s breed,” with a hooded falcon on my wrist, and a pack of lean gazelle hounds racing on before, would have provided me with material for many a dinner-table story, but time pressed, and I felt compelled reluctantly to decline the tempting invitation. * * * * * The mud-brown walls of Guemar lay far behind when we saw approaching us across the desert a rolling cloud of yellow dust. “_Une caravane?_” I asked our Arab guide. With his hand he shaded his keen eyes against the intolerable sun-glare, then shook his head. “_Non, m’sieu’_,” he answered. “_Les méharistes._”