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AN ARAB MARKET.
On arrival at Timgad my wife and I found the weekly Arab market in full swing.
[Illustration: AN ARAB TAKING A SHEEP HOME FROM MARKET.]
It is not in the least like an English market with its tidy pens of sheep and cattle and orderly arrangement of stalls, for this is a dense crowd of white-robed Arabs, in the midst of which camels and donkeys for sale stand about amongst tents full of clothes and corn and seed, and strips of hide for making shoes.
And here and there in the dust are dark men cooking and selling unappetising bits of meat and making black coffee, which is their only drink.
Towards evening the fair breaks up. Those who have bought corn load up great sacks of it upon their camels' backs.
The camel, as you know, squats down on the ground whilst its master loads it, and during the process looks round and gives out heartrending groans as if complaining at the excessive weight being put upon its back, but when the load is adjusted, the animal gets up and walks away quite contentedly.
The camel can travel long distances for days together without drinking fresh water, because his throat is fitted by Nature with bladders, which he fills with water before starting. When he feels thirsty, he ejects one of these out of his throat, and then drinks the water from it.
Others of the Arabs who have been attending the fair mount their mules or donkeys—often two of them on one mule—carrying their purchases with them, in some cases even carrying live sheep across their saddles. Many of them crowd into coaches to go home. These are rickety-looking boxes on wheels with roofs to them, drawn by six horses, which travel three abreast.