watch among the corn, when every bush that creaked was an alarm and every small beast of the veld that squealed set hearts to thumping. From where he lay on his stomach, with his rifle before him, Shadrach could see the line of ridge of rocks over which the baboons must come, dark against a sky only just less dark; and with his eyes fixed on this he waited. Afterwards he said that it was not the baboons he waited for, but the yellow man, Naqua, and he had in his head an idea that all the evil and pain that ever was, and all the sin to be, had a home in that bushman. So a man hates an enemy.

"They came at last. Five of them were suddenly seen on the top of the rocks, standing erect and peering round for a trap; but Shadrach and his men lay very still, and soon one of these scouts gave a call, and then was heard the pat! pat! of hard feet as the body of them came up. There was not light enough to tell one from another, except by size, and as they trooped down among the corn Shadrach lay with his finger throbbing on his trigger, peering among them. But he could see nothing except the mass of their bodies, and waiting till the main part of them was past him, so that he could have a shot at them as they came back, should it happen that they retired at once, he thrust forward his rifle, aimed into the brown, and fired.

"Almost in the same instant the rifles of the Zulus spoke, and a crackle of shots ran up

Then

and down their line. there was a flare of light as the bonfire was lit, and they could see the army of baboons in a fuss of panic dashing to and fro. They fired again and again into the tangle of them, and the beasts commenced to scatter and flee, and Shadrach and his men rose to their full height and shot faster, and the hairy army vanished into the darkness, defeated.

"There was a guffaw of laughter from the Zulus, but ere it was finished a shout from Shadrach brought their rifles leaping up again. The baboons were coming back, a line of them was breaking from the darkness beyond the range of the fire, racing in great leaps towards the men. As they came into the light they were a sight to terrify a host, all big tuskers, and charging without a sound. Shadrach, aiming by instinct only, dropped two as they came, and the next instant they were upon him. He heard the grunt of the Zulu next him as a huge beast leaped against his chest and bore him down, and there were screams from another. Then something heavy and swift drove at him like a bullet and he clubbed his rifle. As the beast flew, with hands and feet drawn in for the grapple, he hewed at it with the butt and smashed it to the ground. The stook struck on bone, and he felt it crush and fail, and there was the thing at his feet.

"How they broke the charge, with what a frenzy of battle they drove the baboons from them, none of the four who

spoke again could ever tell. But it must have been very soon after Shadrach clubbed his rifle that the beasts wayered, were beaten, and fled screaming, and the farmer found himself leaning on his weapon and a great Zulu, shining with sweat, talking to him. "Never have I had such a fight,' the Zulu was saying, 'and never may I hope for such another. The baas is a great chief. I watched him.'

"Something was picking at Shadrach's boots, and he drew back with a shudder from the form that lay at his feet.

"Bring a stick from the fire,' he ordered. 'I want to see this-this baboon.'

"As the man went, he ran a cartridge into the breach of his rifle, and when the burning stick was brought, he turned over the body with his foot.

THE light of the failing sun is off the blue and misty Atlas, and the evening call to prayer from the white minaret has carried its message to the faithful. Then the camels are driven through the city gates, and must grumble themselves to sleep in the Soko outside the crumbling walls. In another hour or so the moon will throw her pallid beam on the restless snakelike necks, and the camelmen, wrapping their coarse haiks more closely about them, will yield to the narcotic influence of the spice-laden atmosphere and slumber unconcernedly beside their dosing charges. Long ere the busy sun is up again at the other end of the mountain-barrier which bounds the fertile plain beyond the city, the camels, stimulated by belabouring, not unmixed with timely Koranic exhortation, will shuffle to their feet, and once again resume the dreadful labours-four hundredweight slung equipoised across each shaggy hump-of the Moorish day. Inshallah! There is rest on Friday, but all the rest of the week the camel toils for rebuff more often than for reward, not indeed as if he liked it, but assuredly as no other beast tamed by man could toil under conditions so adverse.

We can but guess admiringly the marvellous patience and method which must have gone to the reduction of so stiffnecked a brute. The domestication of the cat is commonly

lauded as man's greatest vindication of dominion over the "brute beast," but the cat has merely, after countless centuries, been induced to accept food and house-room in return for no services rendered beyond occasional slaking of its thirst for blood on some abnormally inactive mouse. The education of the cat is, rightly perhaps, accredited to the Egyptian ; but it is to Asia, where Brahmin and Zoroastrian agree in their protection of useful beasts, that we must look for the first taming of the camel. The Arab, as we see him to-day in Barbary, is but an Asiatic of restless ancestry, and none but an Asiatic would have had the indomitable patience, the subtle sympathy with the "lower orders," to associate with himself a quadruped so obtuse that, even after maybe fifty centuries of contact with the human race, often displays little more intelligence than a vegetable. Those only who have roamed the Gobi waste have made firsthand acquaintance with the remnant of earth's wild camels, but a contemplation of the vagaries of the finished article, the pack-camel of Morocco or the swift mahari of Algeria, is enough to rout the Western imagination in its fruitless effort to picture man's early successes with so unpromising a subject.

It seems, indeed, almost proper to qualify the term "domesticated in some way before using it of the camel in the sense in which it applies to the

horse. The latter might well feel insulted at being named in the same breath with an impassive four-legged vehicle which, when required for use, is simply loaded to full capacity, like any Plimsoll-marked vessel, and then got under way. Fidelity in a camel is as absent as wings; and an artist might as soon depict a devoted hyena fondling a lost child as a faithful dromedary standing over the corpse of its fallen master. Mr Lockwood Kipling touched the core of the matter when he avowed that a man might as reasonably lavish his affection on a baggage-waggon.

In short, the camel is an unredeemed boor, more brutish than a mule, less sensible of endearment than even of extremes of temperature and weather. That it is a boon to man in the lands of sand and spinifex let its present establishment in both Northern Africa and the far-off lands beneath the Southern Cross bear witness. Yet its virtues are of the body, compensating for a mental and moral depravity that must be labelled nothing short of amazing.

To the Arabs it is many things in one. Living, it furnishes him with work and drink; dead, it gives him meat, and roof, and raiment. Those who have sat with sheiks in a camel-hair tent and drunk of camels' milk can form some idea of the animal's manifold uses. The march of history leaves the camel untouched. It is as indispensable in its own sphere to-day as it was when the soldier - prophet marched conquering through the land

from east to west, centuries before the shriek of the locomotive had outraged our land and the flying bicycle was a menace on our roads. Not even twentieth century enterprise can acclimatise such horrorsHamdulillah!-in the lands in which it holds its own; and where engineering skill might avail, policy precludes.

The camel moves slowly, yet always he moves; scorning roads, impervious to the elements; even indifferent, if he may only kneel free of encumbrance through its fury, to the blinding dust storm which, borne on the searing wind of the Sahara, seems to inspire all other creatures with vague terrors. He is as indifferent to luxury as patriots holding out in a beleaguered city. Such wretched herbs as tamarisk and oleander furnish him with a sumptuous meal. Water he needs only at such long intervals as would bring painful death to any horse. He is certainly no showy steed; but his plodding is as that of the tortoise, so that at midday he unobtrusively passes at their siesta in some orchard the horsemen who fared forth so bravely at sunrise. At sundown he is already quit of his packs and hobbled in camp, contentedly munching his cheap barley of the previous harvest, and never even looking up as they ride stiffly into camp and fling themselves from their jaded barbs, and make ready to do honour to Mohammed's cooking, that would never disgrace Delmonico's.

On such occasion, it may be, the camels, which have

borne themselves through a grilling day's march under heavy loads with their customary dogged indifference, may evoke pity from their European employers, and this may perchance take the practical form of an order for double rations. Although over-feeding at the end of an arduous march is prejudicial to the camel's wellbeing, the Soussi camelmen will raise no protest, for Nazarene generosity will be balanced by short commons for several nights after the termination of the engagement. If the European, in his anxiety to reward the poor camel, should not wisely content himself with giving out the order, but should further goad the lagging Arabs, who would rather give first attention to the mixing of their kous-kous or the filling of their pipes of kief, and even personally help minister to the recumbent objects of his compassion, he will learn strange things touching camel gratitude. Unaccustomed to the eccentricities of these outcasts at meal-times, he will, if no worse befall him, narrowly miss losing the fingers of one hand. It is to be hoped that the other may not have discarded the riding-whip. There is a homely use for it at this orisis.

Those who know the camel only in Morocco will know it only as a beast of burden. Night after night it may be their lot to camp in the waving plains that lie between the yellow walls of Marrakesh and the blue rollers of the ocean, and the camels will be tethered not half-a-dozen yards from their

troubled pillow, their endless bickerings, alternated by quaint imprecations from their owners, disturbing broken dreams of the day's marches. Excessive carelessness on the part of those in charge may even lead to their entanglement with the pegs and ropes of the sleepingtent. Visions of the heavy centre - pole coming down on unprotected heads are not conducive to sleep; but perhaps the luck may change later, and next night it may be the servant responsible for all the misery whose sleep is broken. So it is written!

66

The mahari, or riding-camels, of Algeria are superb and showy animals, like the Touaregs who ride them. A French Republic, jealous of its African empire, may even find strange uses for them; but that is no concern of ours. Older writers assigned the name dromedary' to the two-humped camel of Central Asia, more properly known as the Bactrian, and regarded by Nehring as not only indigenous to the Gobi desert, but also the direct ancestor of the more familiar one-humped Arabian species. The latter is a

"dromedary when specially bred and trained for fast running, as different in value and temperament from the ordinary pack - camel as a Derby winner from a a carthorse. That the swift saddlecamel has a future before it is not probable. Its day is gone, and even the men who brought it into Africa take little interest nowadays in its record performances. The pious Arab would rather travel slowly, just as he would yet rather, given