“Now we shall have rain,” said our driver. “One wants no weather-glasses at Saïda, I assure you.”
What inventions of man does one want indeed at such a place as Saïda? Place any one of quick mental capacity anywhere out of the world, that is to say, out of the conventional, comfortable world of shops, railways, and penny newspapers, and how readily does he shift for himself. Such a man as this butcher of Saïda had as many interests in life as any of us in these days of social, literary, and political excitement; he was always solving some knotty point in Algerian political economy, or speculating how this or that natural feature of the country could be turned to account. He knew the geography, geology, and mineralogy of every rood; he could tell what birds lived in the air, what beasts haunted the wastes, what plants grew in the oases, and how the Arabs lived in the Desert. It was curious to find how much more he respected the Bedouin than the Spahis, and how lightly he esteemed the moral influence of the French upon the people they had conquered. “Where are our Spahis?” I asked, for we had never seen our escort all the way.
He smiled and pointed to a cluster of Arab douars at some distance.
“You can’t see a little red speck among those tents, I dare say, Madame; but my eyes are used to looking a good way off, and I can. It is one of your precious Spahis, and he’s just thinking as much of you as his wives out there whom he has gone to see. I know ’em, those Spahis; they like nothing better than to be sent _as escort_ with travellers, for that means that they can pay a visit to their women, who begin to cook cous-cous-sou as soon as ever they see a red cloak in the distance. When your Spahis have eaten up everything that comes in their way and seen enough of their good ladies, they’ll come home.”
And true enough, just as we were approaching Saïda, our escort came galloping up, two as wild and fine-looking men as you could see, their scarlet cloaks flung over their shoulders, their dark handsome faces wrapped in white linen trimmed with camel’s hair, their brown muscular arms bare to the elbow, their legs thrust in mocassins of crimson leather richly embroidered. They rode pretty little barbs, and sat upon their high-backed saddles with quite a royal air. Nothing in the world could be more picturesque or brilliant.