A man may thus travel and find food wherever he stretches out his hand, or lays him down to rest. I do not say it is a very agreeable diet, perhaps not a very nutritious one; but still here are roots, and plants, and glands, which will sustain life without the aid of cookery; and populations might spread and multiply, sustained by the spontaneous gifts of the earth. The first peopling of the globe remains the greatest of wonders; for what can be to us more unaccountable than the ease of their travels, the order of their society, the distinctness of their character, the rapidity of their growth? The Douar for which we were bound was beyond the hills. We had, therefore, to cross them, and from the summit the view opened to the eastward a totally different scene. From this height the country behind looked like a swelling sea--before us it was all in heaps. No vacant space and no rocky side, but as if earth had been carted to the spot by tunnelling giants, and shot out there. We found the Douar perched on the summit of a knoll;--the circle of tents looked like a diadem upon its brow. Our tent was pitched in the centre, that is, at the top. As soon as it was in order, our Tibi came to bid us welcome: he was a simple, sedulous man, and from the first to the last moment was just the same. They paraded us round the circle, and we were passed from group to group to be examined, patted, and discussed. The round of visits ended at the Sheik, and I was ushered in among his three wives;--and here was a busy scene. The tent, though I speak from recollection, was little short of forty feet in length and twenty in width; the cross-bar supporting it in the middle might be ten or twelve feet high; the covering swept down, so that towards the extremities you had to crouch or creep. In the centre and around were piled up stores of provisions, clothing, and the like, arranged for the convenience of sitting or sleeping. There were three or four small fires, chiefly of embers, on which were boiling large brown jars with long necks, as if preparing for some great feast. The principal wife would soon by her appearance have arrested my attention, had she allowed me or any one else to be ignorant of her presence and authority. She was comely, bold, haughty, supple in body, dexterous of hand. Seated within reach of the two or three fires, she was proceeding to dispose of the cooking viands, which, with a huge ladle, she heaped up in corresponding dishes. She was giving her orders without intermitting her work, and all the work of the tent--culinary, at least,--seemed to pass through her hands.