Such is the drift of the times. Mankind is banded against brigandage. Never was an ancient and honorable profession so sadly under the weather everywhere. When it flares up into momentary life in Sicily or Attica the newspapers seize hold of the event, a reporter is promptly on the spot, and the bandit-chief is interviewed as coolly as though he had merely shot his wife, bought a legislature or effected a triumphant corner in mess pork. Such depressing influences cannot but wear down the noblest calling. Sicily is tamed, and Circassia, the Asiatic Kabylia, nearly so. A recent French tourist in Algeria was much struck with certain resemblances between the two mountain-races separated by the length of the Mediterranean and the Euxine. At the Kabyle rock-village of Tighil-boukbair the town band turned out to receive him. It consisted of a flute and two tambourines. Both the instruments and the airs appeared to him identical with those to which he had listened in the gorges of frosty Caucasus. At Tiflis he had "assisted" at a concert almost the duplicate of the African entertainment. To make the resemblance perfect, it would have sufficed, he says, to strip the Caucasians to a single undergarment. The same seeker of the picturesque describes a wayside scene characteristic alike of landscape, dress and manners. What can be more sensational than a draught of spring-water, under the shadow of a great rock in a weary land, from the hollowed palm of a Kabyle girl surrounded by her juniors arrayed in a costume that can neither be described nor expressed, for the simple reason that it does not exist? A group like this carries us back to within easy hail of the primal simplicity of Eden. And a period little later than that of Adam and Eve is suggested by the experience of the same traveller at his halt a few hours later. As Abraham, according to the custom of his day, was ready for the three angels with a substantial lunch, so the official Frenchman is the beneficiary of a regulation which entitles him to an abundant _diffa_, or provender for man, horse and attendants, supplied by the nearest village. The Gaul is not always an angel, but his appetite is none the worse for that. Butter does not usually appear in the bill of fare, but its absence is amply atoned for by couscoussou, or African vermicelli, mutton, boiled fowls, honey and sour milk. This repast is served upon flat shallow dishes of wood or earthenware a foot and a half in diameter, the universal platter of Kabylia, and must be a highly acceptable surprise in the desert. Wine is not a part of the required ration, the native grapes, though delicious when eaten, not performing well in the press and vat. Efforts are in progress to remedy this defect and make Algeria a wine-exporting country, but the summer heat is probably too great, and the northern edge of the vine-zone will doubtless maintain its supremacy over the southern, and make the Loire,