[Illustration: ON THE ROAD TO ARGAN FOREST]
The little party was travelling with some hundreds of sheep and goats, which were being tended a little way off by the children, and, large though their flocks seemed, they were in truth sadly reduced by the drought that had driven one and all to the North. The Saharowi explained to Salam that all the wandering Arabs were trekking northwards in search of land that had seen the rain; and that their path was strewn with the skeletons of animals fallen by the way. These nomads carried their wives and little ones, together with tents and household impedimenta, on the camels, and walked on foot with the grown children in charge of the flocks. The sheep they had sold to the butcher were in fair condition, and fetched from four to five shillings in English money, or the equivalent of this sum in goods, for when a Saharowi approaches civilised lands he is generally in need of some of the products of civilisation, or thinks he is, though, at need, he manages excellently well without them.
Among the miscellaneous gathering that the Tuesday market had attracted to Hanchen I noticed a small company of acrobats from the Sus, and a medicine man of fierce aspect, who sat by himself under a rough tent, muttering charms and incantations, and waiting for Allah to send victims. This wonder-worker had piercing eyes, that seemed to examine the back of your head, long matted hair and a beard to match. He wore a white djellaba and a pair of new slippers, and was probably more dangerous than any disease he aided and abetted.
For the amusement of the people who did not care for acrobatic feats and stood in no need of the primitive methods of the physician, there was a story-teller, who addressed a somewhat attenuated circle of phlegmatic listeners, and a snake-charmer who was surrounded by children. Sidi ben Aissa undoubtedly kept the snakes--spotted leffas from the Sus--from hurting his follower, but not even the saint could draw _floos_ from poor youngsters whose total wealth would probably have failed to yield threepence to the strictest investigator. Happily for them the charmer was an artist in his way; he loved his work for its own sake, and abated no part of his performance, although the reward would hardly buy him and his assistant a meal of mutton and bread at their labour's end. The boys of Hanchen were doing brisk business in the brass cases of cartridges that had been fired on the previous day, and without a doubt the story of the wonders of a repeating gun lost nothing in the telling.