do with, and which was still grunting at being so unceremoniously disturbed.

The Beni Aissa, or "Children of Jesus," as they call themselves, of Algiers, leave the dancing dervishes of Constantinople in the shade. If we are to believe our author, they play with serpents, eat cactuses, spines and all, swallow scorpions, bite and lick red-hot plates, and stab themselves in the eyes with sharp instruments: all this to prove that with faith stones, insects, fire itself, will change into food.

One fine morning, just as he was sitting down to breakfast, M. de Quivières received a despatch signed "Jusuf." On opening the parcel, great was his surprise to see in it two objects of a repulsive aspect. At first he thought it might be some new and wonderful species of truffles, or morels; but remembering that when the general had taken his departure on an expedition against the Kabyles, he had, in reply to a question put to him as to what he should send back as a present, said, "Send me the ears of the first Kabyle that you kill," he looked again, and found that the supposed truffles were the two ears of a Kabyle! The Spahis used to be paid for every enemy's head that they brought in, but this being found to be attended with inconvenience, the authorities satisfied themselves with two ears. Two natives wishing to get the reward given for a head, once volunteered each an ear; unluckily, however, when they were presented they were found to be both left ears, and the chef de bureau Arabe is still waiting for the two right ears to pay the price of two heads.

M. de Quivières's sporting expeditions appear to have been attended not only with indifferent success, but also with some ridicule. He was, however, more lucky at Constantine. There he disabled "a magnificent eagle" with small shot! and a young Moor having come to his assistance and pinioned him, he was enabled to bear away his prize to the Hôtel de l'Europe. It would be cruel to insinuate that the magnificent eagle might be after all a common vulture of the shambles, but after the story of a camel mistaken for a lion, and a toad for a panther, such a further error would not be utterly beyond the range of probability.

M. de Quivières was not, however, it appears, a chasseur given to mistakes. On the contrary, he got very angry because, having stated at Constantine that he had seen foxes in the Mansourah, he was laughed at. He staked his reputation as a sportsman to the fact, and went out at night determined to vindicate his reputation for accuracy. Having taken up his position behind two rocks (it might have been thought that one would have been sufficient), he had not waited long before a beast ap peared, but lo! it was a jackal-a superb jackal! Another soon came forth, it also was a jackal! He began to feel that his reputation was gone, when he perceived an elongated muzzle projecting itself beyond a crevice in the rocks followed soon by a head, and then a body with a tail such as jackal never wagged. Now was his turn for a triumph; he sent the whole contents of his fowling-piece right into its chest, and nearly broke his own neck in tumbling down the rocks to secure his prize.

Travelling on the road from Constantine to Bona, the party were accompanied by a tourist and his lady. The men, like sensible fellows. Sept.-VOL. CXI. NO. CCCCXLI.

I

slept out in the open air, but the lady took refuge in the Arab huts, or tents, as the case might be. An unfortunate fall from her mule having necessitated a change of garments, her servant counted a hundred and ninety-nine creeping things in those that were put off. What a lesson for adventurous ladies! Poor lady! At Neschmeya, where our author, assisted by the renowned Jules Gérard, killed, or helped to kill, a jackal and a hyæna, she roused the camp in the dead of night by her screams, rushing at the same time out of her tent in a very incomplete toilette : some repulsive creature had actually walked over her face in her sleep. Near Neschmeya is the famous plain called that of the Lion's Rock, where, in a lion-hunt organised by the renowned Jusuf in 1836, fourteen men were put hors de combat, eight wounded, and six killed, by a single lion. No wonder that the king of animals was held in such high respect on the banks of the Hamise.

Upon the occasion of a visit to the falls of the Chiffa, the party were accompanied by another lady, who, feeling fatigued, waited, in company of one of the cavaliers, in a little wood that lay at about half way from Blidah, while the remainder of the party proceeded on their journey. The couple enjoyed themselves so much in the grove, it appears, as to have attracted the attention of a troop of monkeys, who began shouting, grinning, and laughing at them, and finished by stoning them so effectually as to expel them from the shady precincts, and they were found on the return of the others in a state of considerable discomfiture, exposed to the whole force of the sun's rays.

The aspect of Oran, and the manners and customs of its inhabitantsamong whom are five thousand Spaniards-differ altogether from those Algiers. Balls are especially the fashion, and the ladies are so persevering in their saltatory exercises, that at a ball given by General de Lamoricière there was no getting rid of them except by opening the shutters and letting in all the brilliancy of a morning sun upon what M. de Quivières very ungallantly describes as "pale faces with disordered hair, and long grey furrows down the cheeks and neck-results of the night's exercise." The gentlemen do not appear to have been much better behaved, for they had a souper fin at seven in the morning, at which Generals Bosquet and De Lamoricière had a warm discussion as to the relative merits of their horses, and Bosquet and D'Illiers mounted two steeds without saddles, and went through all the exercises of an amphitheatre.

M. de Quivières was not only inspector, tourist, artist, sportsman, and cordon bleu, but he was also a magnetiser, and, as with all other things, de première force! He relates several instances of lucidity which surprised even himself. One is, perhaps, as amusing as it is surprising.

It appears that a captain of engineers, who is described as being of a strong mind, but weak heart, used to laugh at all their "grimaces," as he called them, and declared that none of the patients really slept., He never should have any confidence in magnetism, he declared, till a person selected by himself would undergo the trial; and he proposed that a young girl, in whose ingenuousness he had the utmost faith, should be magnetised.

He accordingly went to fetch her; and, once asleep, she was placed in

magnetic relation with the captain, who still doubted the reality of her somnolence. But scarcely had he touched her hand, than the calm and mild expression of the young girl's physiognomy was changed into an expression of manifest annoyance, and even anger.

"Ah, it is you!" she said. "What are you doing here? Don't touch me! I shall not listen to you any more. Go-go to Luisa, repeat to her what you said to her last night: that you never will love any one but her; and that I am a little fool. Go away, I do not want to see you any more."

The unfortunate captain of engineers, as red as the facings of his coat, astounded at this deluge of reproaches, did not know whether to reply to them, to laugh, or to be angry.

"Are you quite certain that she is asleep?" he said, with an expression of considerable anxiety.

"You shall convince yourself of that," retorted the operator: and he quietly awakened the patient. Her features gradually resumed the mildness and serenity which were their habitual expression, and when she opened her eyes, she went blushingly and took the arm of her perfidious captain, who never expressed a wish to see her magnetised again.

At Tlemcen, which he describes as half prison, half barracks, ruinous, and tenanted by jackals, rats, lizards, and Arabs, our author saw a soldier shot and an Arab decapitated in the space of one week. The first took off his coat without flinching, crossed his arms proudly on his breast, quietly contemplated the muskets that were levelled at him, and died without a shudder. The second walked to his doom, his hands and eyes raised up to heaven, like a priest going to the sacrifice. There was even enthusiasm in his look, and this changed to resignation when he bowed his head to receive the blow. It was only at the second stroke that he fell to the ground. Then, horrible to relate, the body rose up again, took a step towards the executioner, and said to him: "Do your duty better, unskilful man! Muhammad will punish you!" It was only, however, at the fifth blow that the head was severed from the body. M. de Quivières says the death of the first was that of a brave man, that of the second of a fanatic. Love of approbation in reality sustained in a great measure the first; religious feeling the second. The Westerns seldom do justice to the deep piety of the Orientals.

Tlemcen is situated in a beautiful district. M. de Quivières compares it to Alsace, Franche-Comté, and the Vosges, among the most fertile and flourishing of the hilly districts of France.

"What a pity," he exclaims, contemplating such beautiful scenery, "that this country should be so difficult to conquer, and that they do not send to it men and money sufficient! The more one explores it, the more fertile and the more beautiful does it appear. It is Brittany with its meadows, its rivulets, and its great trees. On every side are the ruins of magnificent mosques, graceful marabuts, colossal stones and fragments of columns; the traces of a once powerful occupation are to be seen in every direction, showing that a great nation has passed over the land."

Chedli, one of the wealthiest sheikhs of the province of Oran, feasted

our traveller with true Arab hospitality. There was the immense wooden salver, with the inevitable roast sheep; there was a dish of potatoes (introduced by Marshal Bugeaud), served up with a sauce of fine herbs; there were boiled chesnuts; ragoût of mutton, with peas; cakes and honey, the latter of exquisite flavour; and there were raisins and oranges. In return, M. de Quivières produced a bottle of anisette de Bordeaux, and, as his host was suffering from rheumatism in the shoulder, he recommended frictions. The sheikh tried the receipt, and then, by way of change, began to imbibe a little, passing it to his friends, who found it so much to their liking, that our traveller says, "Je vis le moment où la bouteille entière allait disparaître !" The Frenchman was not so liberal as the Arab.

It was on this occasion, too, that he first witnessed a visitation of locusts. An immense fertile plain was covered two or three inches deep with the noxious insects. As far as the eye could reach, the earth was of the same monotonous brown colour. Not a blade of corn or a vegetable had been left, and nothing remained but the skeletons of the trees. Our traveller expressed his sympathy for the sheikh, but the latter, with true Mussulman resignation, lifted up his eyes, and muttered, "Allah akbar!"

At Mostaganem the houses, built of reeds plastered with mud, cracked in the heat, and became the lurking-places of innumerable reptiles. Luckily, the station was also frequented by numerous storks, which kept them down a little. One evening that, garrison style, they were waiting, with cigars a-light, to see Colonel Berthier to his bed, before bidding him good-by, the orderly, on turning down the clothes, disclosed an enormous snake, rolled up like une anguille à la tartare-a culinary comparison introduced upon a strange occasion. A pair of tongs were obtained, and the animal was thrown out to a stork, which, from the liberality with which it was helped to reptiles from the colonel's hut, had become a steadfast friend and companion.

Our traveller's apartment in this delightful town looked out upon the market-place, and there the whole canine race of the neighbourhood— pointers, setters, and hounds of the officers, Arab dogs, and bazaar dogsheld their rendezvous at night to devour the refuse of the day; and no doubt their discussions, he intimates, were very brilliant, but they were also so noisy that, however much one might be inclined to do so, it was impossible to remain a stranger to them. At first our traveller thought that, by opening the window and apostrophising after the fashion of the most energetic orators, he should effect some diminution of the nuisance; but finding this utterly ineffectual, he laid up a store of stones on the window-sill, and, as he could not sleep, he spent the night in bombarding the enemy. No doubt he would soon have got tired of this, and have ultimately resigned himself to sleep amid the clamour of dogs, as many an Oriental traveller has had to do amidst the still more piercing howls of jackals, when luckily he was enabled to start for Arzew. On the road to the latter place he was the victim of two Diffus (whence our Indian tiffin), which he was obliged to submit to. The Arab chiefs had got scent of his journey, and three times on the road he found a tent pitched, and a collation prepared. "Quels rafraîchissements, bon Dieu!" he exclaims. Three sheep roasted entire, preceded by an enormous dish

of couscoussou! It certainly was a rather serious undertaking to attempt to grapple with such provender two or three times in the morning; but he had one comfort, that when he could not dispose of what Arabian hospitality had provided for him, the assistants, as he calls them, benefited largely by his abstinence.

Arrived at Arzew, the commandant of the post had a bed laid for the traveller in an outhouse, which is dignified as a pavillon, and M. de Quivières comforted himself with the idea of a good night's rest after all his discomforts at Mostaganem. But, alas! no sooner in bed and the candle out, than he felt the presence of a whole host of minute enemies. The candle was lit again, and there they were, red, black, brown, and grey; flat, long, round, and of all shapes. "My counterpane," says the unfortunate inspector, was a turf, upon which a whole army of insects were engaged in a steeple-chase!"

The next day, on approaching Oran, a friend was to send out some horsemen with refreshments to relieve the traveller at a half-way station. After a great deal of trouble, clambering over rocks, and with difficulty effecting a way among spiny shrubs, firing now and then a signal of distress, he at length came upon the emissaries, who were quietly engaged in devouring the pastry that had been sent for his especial comfort, and washing it down with the Bordeaux destined to relieve his mouth, parched with long travel through the gorge of the Lion Mountains! The coolness of the emissaries surpassed even their gluttony. With a bottle in one hand and a great slice of ham in the other, the leader of the party rose up to welcome the traveller, whom, he said, they had given up as having fallen into some rocky cleft, or been eaten up by lions! At last a good bath and two nights of undisturbed sleep at Oran, followed by the restorative influence of the cookery at La Régence, in Algiers, enabled M. de Quivières to close his journey in a calm and dignified manner by a trip to Tunis, before crossing the Mediterranean. Probably what he had experienced in Algeria did not unfit him for the enjoyment of the comforts of home: a little roughing often does many a discontented man a world of good.