The cave dwellers of southern Tunisia; recollections of a sojourn with the khalifa of Matmata; . leg, drawing blood and laming it—a pleasant be-ginning to our mountain trip ! We dismounted and threw stones at these furiouswhite sheep-dogs, and at last they retired, showingtheir teeth and ready to resume the attack themoment we remounted. Fortunately a man and aboy appeared and called the dogs off. Believingthe man to be their owner, I ordered Hamed torate him soundly and threaten that I would reportwhat had occurred to the Khalifa. The man tookthe rebuke quietly, but told us humbly that he was
The cave dwellers of southern Tunisia; recollections of a sojourn with the khalifa of Matmata; . leg, drawing blood and laming it—a pleasant be-ginning to our mountain trip ! We dismounted and threw stones at these furiouswhite sheep-dogs, and at last they retired, showingtheir teeth and ready to resume the attack themoment we remounted. Fortunately a man and aboy appeared and called the dogs off. Believingthe man to be their owner, I ordered Hamed torate him soundly and threaten that I would reportwhat had occurred to the Khalifa. The man tookthe rebuke quietly, but told us humbly that he wasa poor devil who possessed nothing—not even adog. The proprietor of the dwelling was absent. Then greet him from us and say that he 62 CAVE DWELLERS should have his dogs under better control, or hewill have the Lvlialifa after him. The wrongly accused man kissed a fold of myburnous, and we again mounted our horses andclimbed the mountain in a zigzag course, by dith-cult paths over loose stones. Belkassim rode only a few paces in front of me,yet I saw his horse above the level of my head,. EXCAVATED STABLE. whilst Hamed, who was a couple of paces behinddragging along his lame horse, appeared to be farbeneath me. From the summit I looked back along the valleyand to a hioh undulatino; stretch, where the treesshowed like spots on a panthers skin. Over the valley to the north rose the mountains,and beyond them stretched an indistinct light l)lueplain, melting fjir away into a darker blue—this wasthe sea. Step by step, slowly but surely, our horses paced RETURN TO GABES 63 down the long valley into which we and again we put u}) a covey of partridges thatflew up the mountain, and the larks started incouples from amongst the palms and stones. Wepresently hurried on at the (piick pace to whichthe Berber horses are accustomed ; Hamed singing,as we went alono-, a sono- that echoed above us andon every side. Perched on some stones at the bottom of the drybed of a torren
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, bookpublisheretcetc, bookyear189
