prejudices and ridiculous superstitions. It is a picture with much shading. But let us not be too severe: it is not so very long since very nearly the same absurdities were proclaimed in France as indisputable truths. I was talking one day with a marabout of the tribe of the Oulad-Sidi-Schik about the horses of his country, and pretended to question some of the opinions he had expressed. "You cannot understand that, you Christians," he exclaimed, abruptly rising to his feet, "but horses are our riches, our joys, our life, our religion. Has not the Prophet said: 'The good things of this life, even to the day of the last judgment, shall be suspended from the hairs which are between the eyes of your horses?'" "I have read the Koran," I replied, "but have never met with those words." "You will not find them in the Koran, which is the voice of Allah, but in the conversations of our lord Mohammed (_Hadite sidna Mohammed_)." "And you believe in them?" I retorted. "Before taking my leave of you, I will show you what may happen to those who have faith." And my companion gravely recited the following history: "A poor man confiding in the words of the Prophet which I have just repeated to you, came one day upon a dead mare. So he cut off her head and buried it under the threshold of his door, saying to himself: 'I shall become rich if it please Allah' (_An-sha-Allah_). Days, however, followed each other, but no riches came, and yet the Believer never doubted. The Sultan of the country being on his way to visit a holy spot, happened by accident to pass before the lowly abode of the poor Arab. It was situated at the end of a small plain bordered by large trees and watered by a pretty rivulet. The scene pleasing him, he halted his brilliant escort, and dismounted to rest himself in the shade. Just as he was about to give the signal to continue the journey his steed, which a slave was employed to look after, impatient to devour space, began to neigh and to paw the ground, and presently broke loose. All the efforts of the _saïs_ (grooms) to catch him again were for a long time in vain and every one was in despair, when they beheld him stop suddenly of himself at the threshold of an old hut which he smelt at while throwing up the ground with his forefeet. An Arab, until that moment an unmoved spectator, went up to him without frightening him, as if he had been known to him, caressed him with hand and voice, laid hold of him by the mane, the bridle being in a thousand pieces, and without any difficulty led him quietly up to the astonished Sultan. "How have you contrived," demanded his greatness, "thus to tame one of the most fiery steeds of Arabia?"