He smiled benignly. I love the kadi. He is a charming person. He is the Mohammedan Judge of Chellala, and he looks like an early Victorian Englishman: fair beard, very white skin, a slightly rubicund nose, clear blue eyes, and long white hands. If he wore a pair of nankeen pantaloons and a choker instead of a burnous and a turban, he would be the image of what Alfred de Musset must have been in his prime. The kadi has, moreover, a great sense of humor.
When we had filled up, we rolled off first of all through the mountains of Chellala and then on to the great open plains which run down to the Sahara, forming some of the finest pasture-land of Algeria.
My companions all chatted away to each other about their sheep-raising, their crops, their horses, their falcons, their shooting—all those things so dear to these country gentlemen.
Occasionally they poked fun at the kadi, who is not a warrior nor a sportsman, but he always had a sharp retort which sent them into helpless laughter.
Finally we arrived at Taguine and stopped for a moment at the monument which marks the place where the Duc d’Aumale’s flying column captured the whole of the Emir-el-Kader’s smala in 1843 and thus broke his long resistance.
This was an occasion to rain more jokes on the kadi’s head, as he is a direct descendant of the great emir, and it was the great-uncle of the Caïd Aïssa, the loyal General Yusuf, who was in command of the native cavalry on this occasion.
As soon as we alighted, the various chiefs had business to attend to, and I was despatched to fish. I was furnished with a long pole, on the end of which was a piece of thin rope to which was further riveted a hook. There was also a box of worms.
My guide was an ex-soldier dressed in a tattered burnous on which was proudly pinned the Croix de Guerre, and under which he wore a seedy frock coat with satin facings. He had no socks, but a pair of very battered slippers.
After trudging through the fields of standing barley for about half an hour we came to a kind of brown ditch with a rivulet one yard broad trickling sadly down the middle.
“Here is the river,” said the guide proudly.