At the _fantasia_ in question luxuriously furnished tents had been erected for the comfort of the native guests; a champagne luncheon provided the excuse for innumerable protestations of friendship; a series of races with money prizes was arranged for the visitors' horses; and, before leaving, the sheikhs were presented with ornate saddles, gold-mounted rifles, and, in the cases of the more important chieftains, with crosses of the Legion of Honour. In return for this they willingly agreed to capture and surrender certain fugitives from justice who had fled into the desert; to warn the more lawless of their tribesmen that the plundering of caravans must cease; to furnish specified quotas of recruits for the native cavalry; and to send in for sale to the Remount Department a large number of desert-bred horses. And, which is the most important of all, they go back to their tented homes in the desert immensely impressed with the power, the wealth, and the generosity of France. [Illustration: “THROUGH DIM BAZAARS WHERE TURBANED SHOPKEEPERS SQUAT PATIENTLY IN THEIR DOORWAYS.” Here, in the native quarters of the remote towns of the Algerian hinterland, the disciples of Pan-Islam find eager listeners to their creed of Africa for the Africans. _Photograph by Em. Frechon, Biskra._] Not content with these periodic manifestations of friendship, the French Government makes it a point occasionally to invite the native rulers of the lands under its control to visit France as the guests of the nation. Escorted by French officers who can talk with them in their own tongue, these colonial visitors in their outlandish costumes are shown the delights of Montmartre by night, they are dined by the President of the Republic at the Élysée, they are given the freedom of Paris at the Hôtel de Ville, and they finally return to their own lands the friends and allies of France for the rest of their lives. “It doesn't cost the government much,” an official of the French Colonial Office once remarked to me, _à propos_ of a visit then being paid to Paris by the King of Cambodia, “and it tickles the niggers.”