And when I saw that all the place was calm,
I went yet nearer to the mound, and there
I saw upon the topmost point of all
A tress of hair, fresh severed from the head.
On a previous visit to Kabylia, when living at a farmhouse in part of which resided a native family, I one morning heard a lamentable cry, and running out, I, unperceived, observed what passed. A man sat crouched upon a stone, with burnous flung about him, and hands pressed against his bent-down head; his attitude was precisely that of mourning figures I have seen painted on Greek vases.
At his side stood a woman swaying backwards and forwards, with face raised as if questioning that stainless sky which seemed to mock her with its deep serenity, with wearisome iteration uttering the same piteous lament. She held her arms stretched upwards, and ever and anon her clenched fists descended with merciless blows upon her breasts. A boy, their first-born, had just fallen down dead in a fit. The parents rushed out of the house into the fields, and in this unaffected manner they showed their anguish. The image of that poor woman will ever remain graven in my memory, a picture of dire and bitter lamentation. What passionate gestures were these! How human! But how un-English! This vehemence, this spreading forth of hands when there was none to comfort, recalled Biblical wailings.
‘Behold, I cry out of wrong, but I am not heard: I cry aloud, but there is no judgment. He hath fenced up my way that I cannot pass, and he hath set darkness in my paths. He hath stripped me of my glory, and taken the crown from my head. He hath destroyed me on every side, and I am gone: and my hope hath he removed like a tree.’
The day after the funeral at Thililit, we returned to the same place and found two big vultures promenading slowly backwards and forwards over the fresh grave; they remained there the greater part of the afternoon. What mysterious faculties have these birds, both of wing and scent. At Souk-el-Jemāa, we saw a flock of thirty or forty, sitting on the refuse of the slaughtered animals, whilst the market was still crowded, and we approached within twenty paces without disturbing their repast. There must be a great number in the high mountains, for some are usually in sight. When painting, I have heard a rushing noise overhead, have looked up, and seen one of these great birds sweeping swiftly along without moving a feather. Thus they wing their flight, soaring in any direction to a prodigious distance, performing this feat apparently by a mere effort of the will. The power this bird possesses of discovering its prey is attributed in the Book of Job to keenness of vision.
‘There is a path which no fowl knoweth, and which the vulture’s eye hath not seen.’
‘Whence then cometh wisdom? and where is the place of understanding? Seeing it is hid from the eyes of all living, and kept close from the fowls of the air.’