to imprisonment for twelve months and twenty-seven days, though just why the odd twenty-seven I have never been able to learn. But it may have been that it was an only son, or a husband, or a chieftain of importance who was murdered, and in such cases the relatives invariably demand the extreme penalty of the law. “Do you insist on his blood?” inquires the Bey, a portly and easy-going Oriental who has a marked aversion to taking life, even in the case of murderers. “We do, your Highness,” replies the spokesman of the family, salaaming until his tarboosh-tassel sweeps the floor. “Be it so,” says the Bey, shrugging his shoulders. “I call upon you to bear witness that I am innocent of his death. May Allah the Compassionate have mercy upon him! Turn him toward the gate of the Bardo,” which last is the local euphemism for “Take him out and hang him.” Five minutes later the wretch is adorning a gallows which has been set up in the palace gardens. Due north from the land of the Ouled-Naïls, and hemmed in by the snow-capped peaks of the Atlas, is the Grand Kabylia, a wild, strange region, peopled by many but known to few. Whence the Kabyles came nobody knows, though their fair complexions, red hair, and blue eyes lead the ethnologists to suppose that they are a branch of that equally white and equally mysterious Berber race who occupy the Moroccan ranges of the Atlas. Thirteen hundred years ago they came to North Africa from out of the East, bringing with them a civilisation and a culture and institutions distinctively their own. Retreating into their mountain fastnesses before that Arab invasion which spread the faith of the Prophet over all North Africa, they have dwelt there ever since, the French, who conquered them in the middle of the last century only after heavy losses, having wisely refrained from interference in their tribal laws or customs, which remain, therefore, almost unmodified.