White-robed Arabs squat patiently in the sun-baked market-place; the mud-walled houses radiate heat like a red-hot stove; rising above the low, flat roofs and the fringe of date-palms is the inevitable minaret from which the muezzin drones his call to prayer] So strict are the rules of the caste that any intercourse with non-Mozabites, save in the way of trade, is rigorously forbidden; nor may a Mozabite take his wife, or a child under ten years, away from his own country; nor may he marry elsewhere for any reason whatsoever. Those of other cults, including orthodox Moslems, may not set foot within Mozabite places of worship, while Beni-Isguen, the holy city of the Mozabites, not far from Ghardaia, is held in such sanctity that no outlander, none but a born Mozabite, is permitted to sleep in it. Until the French intervened, the Mozabites refused to bury any member of their sect, no matter where he died, except in the sacred soil of the homeland, the bodies of those who died abroad being kept by their relatives or friends until there came an opportunity to ship them by caravan to the M’zab. The Arabs will tell you that, until the French authorities put an end to the practice for sanitary reasons, there was a corpse in the back room of every Mozabite shop in Biskra. The market-place of Ghardaia, a great sun-baked square surrounded by whitewashed arcades, and packed with men and animals, is one of the most interesting spots in all North Africa, for to it are drawn caravans, merchants, and traders from all the countries bordering on the Sahara to dispose of their peculiar wares. Here come fat, greasy Jewish merchants to tempt the spendthrift, splendor-loving Arabs with the magnificent red saddlery manufactured in the _souks_ of Tunis; _commerçants_ from Oran and Algiers to purchase dates for the European market; furtive, shifty-eyed Moorish gun-runners, who, evading the desert patrols, have slipped through the passes of the Atlas with cases of rifles and ammunition concealed beneath bales of innocent merchandise; smart-looking cavalry officers in quest of horses for the Algerian remount stations; sun-darkened men who have come with caravans of salt from the far-off Hills of Air; masked Touareg with their brindled, white, or piebald camels, and, occasionally, a rare and valuable beast of the tawny reddish-buff variety, so prized for speed and endurance; hawk-nosed Arab horse-dealers from the Ziban and the slopes of the High Atlas; wild-looking shepherds of the Fringe, driving great flocks of sheep, their wool dyed in various vivid colors for purposes of identification; ubiquitous Levantines from the littoral, hawking the tawdry European articles which the desert people prize; and, mingling with these men of business, stalwart Senegalese _tirailleurs_; swaggering _goumiers_ in enormous turbans and voluminous blue cloaks; hard-eyed soldiers of the Foreign Legion, whose pipe-clayed helmets and linen uniforms seem