But even though there are strangers who trouble these good
folk, their home could not have looked more charmingly a haunt of peace
than it did. All round the village one saw orchards of figs, apricots, and
pomegranate trees; the first with the leaves untouched by the summer heat,
the apricots just at the end of their blossoming, and the pomegranates
still in flower. In place of the dry, hard soil that was so trying to the
feet of man and beast, there were here meadows in plenty, from which the
irises had only lately died. I saw the common English dandelion growing
within stone's throw of a clump of feathery palms.
Tired after the vigil of the previous night and the long hours that had
led up to it, we reclined at our ease under the olives, determined to
spend the night at Sidi el Muktar, some fifteen or twenty miles away. From
there one can hunt the great bustard, and I had hoped to do so until I saw
the animals that were to take us to the coast. Neither the bustard nor the
gazelle, that sometimes roams Sidi el Muktar's plains, had anything to
fear from those noble creatures. The kaid alone might have pursued bird or
beast, but as his gun was innocent of powder and shot there would have
been nothing but exercise to seek.
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