years in Algeria, where three beautiful
children were born to them, who were never
suprised (after the first time or two) to find a
lion's footsteps in their garden in the morning,
and one of their goals or tame antelopes gone.
Perhaps, therefore, I shall be helping Dr.
Whipemwell's boys in writing their theme on
luxury in sport (especially as their time is
entirely taken up with Latin and Greek—
modern languages being deemed quite
superfluous in the doctor's establishment), if I
communicate to them a few facts and hints which
have been let fall in print by M. Jules Gérard,
killer of lions, and lieutenant in the third
regiment of Spahis.

M. Gérard's shooting campaigns have been
undertaken from a sense of duty; as his book
is written in the hope of raising up worthy
disciples and successors to himself in the same
branch of the chace. Be it remembered that
the French are to be thanked by the rest of
Europe for many things they have done in
Algeria; for many things which have been
harshly criticised, and for much even which
they could not help doing. The Arab has
been too long regarded as a purely poetic
object. It will clear our vision to rest
assured that, if the inhabitants of the north
coast of Africa had been allowed to have their
own way, without control or interference, the
Mediterranean waters might still be swarming
with the pirates of Morocco, Tunis, and
Algiers, and many a Christian family might
have to mourn a member still pining in
Mohammedan slavery.

But the Arabs are brave. They look
down on Europeans from the height of their
grandeur with insufferable disdain. The
mission of the French, therefore, has been to
subdue them by a moral victory. If you do
good amongst them by giving to the poor,
they will say you don't know what to do with
your money; and will not think a bit the
better of you for it. If you do good by
rendering strict justice, they will say you do this
to conciliate their good opinion: to convert
them to your belief, your customs, your
religion; and they will be distrustful of you.
If you prove yourself bolder and stronger
than they, they will hold you in respect and
veneration. You will overawe them, always
and everywhere. They will not dare to look
you in the face. You risk your life, therefore,
not solely for your own pleasure, but
for civilised Europe, for your native land.

What the Arabs fear most, after God, is
the lion. To destroy him they usually make
use of stratagem. They decoy him into a
hole, and butcher him there. They also
murder him beneath the screen of solid-built
subterranean retreats called melbedas,
or from the tops of trees to which they
have climbed. Rarely do they attack him
openly; and, when they do, it is a battle in
which the victory is dearly bought, even
when the victory is on their side. But
never has an Arab, alone or in company,
dared to march against a lion, or to await
him unprotected by shelter during the
night. The insolent pride of this people
has been lowered by the sporting feats
of a single Frenchman.

The Arab is brave; and how is it possible
for him to be otherwise? He is born, lives,
and dies, in the midst of dangers which the
civilised European knows not, and cannot
know. In his childhood, instead of morality,
they talk to him about massacres, war, and
combats. The wisest, the most virtuous, the
man of greatest consideration, is the man who
commits murder the best, and the oftenest.
He is taught family vengeance, mutual hatred
of tribe against tribe, execration of Christians;
and, to complete his education, when
he has attained his fifteenth year, some evening,
after the old men have been telling,
around the fire beneath their tent, their
hatreds and their vengeances,— when the
neighbours have retired, just as the lad is
going to seek a place to lie down in, his father
pushes him with his foot, calling him lazy
and coward. The boy, who does not understand
what such treatment means, begs
his parent to explain. The elder laughs,
and points to an old pistol hanging on the
tent-pole by the side of a poignard. The lad
leaps towards his father, and respectfully
kisses him on 'the shoulder. The parent,
happy and proud to have so promising a son,
makes him sit down beside him, and addresses
him thus:—

"Have you ever gone out at night without
my seeing you?"

The lad relates the story of his flirtations
with a girl whom he has sometimes visited,
at the risk of having his brains dashed out
by a pistol-shot.

"Very well," says the father; "but that is
not enough. You are tall now, and it makes
me blush to hear the neighbours call you
little. It is time to show them that you are
a man."

"I ask nothing better," replies the boy;
"but to go alone,— the night looks very
dark, and I am afraid."

"For the first time you shall not go alone.
Take these arms. Take off your burnous;
it is too white. And tighten your shirt
beneath your girdle."

Whilst the pupil is making his toilette, the
old man slips under a friend's tent, and says,
"My son is ready." The mammas shed a
few tears, fearing an unfortunate and
unsuccessful result; but they are reassured by the
knowledge that their darlings will be
conducted by a man of prudence and courage.

Everything is thus arranged for the best;
and, at ten o'clock, in a pelting rain and a
night as dark as pitch, three men, dressed in
earth-coloured shirts raised above the knees
by a leather girdle, mysteriously start from
the douar, or clustered group of tents.
Beneath a burnous patched in a thousand places,
and which has served three generations without