If you tell him your wish is to start at eight in the morning, behold, he is knocking at your door before sunrise, and imploring you to make haste. He is convinced in his own mind that the intervening hours will be spent in the absurdities of washing and dressing. If you remonstrate, he shrugs his shoulders, and you may presently hear him confiding to his friend, that “the English are a strange people. True, Allah made them, but He alone can understand them!” We were very punctual on this particular morning, and at seven o’clock had mounted our rough little horses, whose wonderful necklaces and charms formed no small part of their equipment. The muleteer highly entertained us. He was a round-faced, scantily-clothed youth, whose evident pride in his cattle was manifest as he pointed to their decorations. He greeted us with broad grins and “Bon jour!” These words being the only scrap of a foreign tongue he had picked up, they were employed in season and out of season. Whenever one of our party looked pleased, or nodded kindly to him, he would stiffen himself, beam on her, and, with a fine air, roll out the salutation, “Bon jour!” Our cavalcade now formed up, and we started off in high spirits, prepared for any adventure that might fall to our lot. Ameen, of course, led the van, his black horse gorgeously dressed in trappings of “barbaric splendour,” and he seated on a wondrous saddle, his purple silk shawl or _kaffieh_ tied round his head and falling behind in graceful folds over the voluminous abbah, or cloak. The pair were imposing-looking objects in dignified contrast to the ludicrous figures of “Bon Jour” and his beast, who followed next in the procession. His horse was a fearful and wonderful creature, carefully guarded against the influence of the evil eye by fantastic festoons of blue beads and shells which depended from his neck and mane and tail. Stacked upon his back were cooking pots, luncheon baskets, sunshades, wraps, and other gear, flanked by bursting saddle-bags. In the midst of these articles sat “Bon Jour,” complacently ambling on in the jog-trot style peculiar to his tribe, his brown legs dangling down, his leathern belt decorated with “A bottle on each side To keep his balance true.” We brought up the rear demurely enough, trying to get our mettlesome steeds under control, with the help of “Bon Jour,” who, turning round and facing us, would yell in Arabic one moment to them, and the next encourage us with— “Nods and becks, and wreathèd smiles,” and the inevitable salutation in the French tongue, looking for all the world like a travelling showman on parade!