This, roughly speaking, is the sport of Algeria. There are, of course, private individuals—European farmers—who do a certain amount of preserving, but they are in the minority, and rarely ask others than their neighbors to share in their shoots.
Game exists everywhere, and, if the sportsman will take trouble, he can have as good fun with gun and rifle as in any country, but he must do it all himself.
CHAPTER XX
THE NOMADS
The nomads are the descendants of the original Arabs who invaded North Africa in the seventh and twelfth centuries. Here and there they have been slightly Berberized, but generally speaking they are quite a separate type from the inhabitants of the rest of Algeria. Tall, and tanned by the sun, they look fearlessly before them as they move with that easy gait of men born and bred in the open plain. Their feet and hands are shapely, and though not actually good-looking they have very fine faces, with an expression of great calm.
Their clothes are much scantier than those of their brethren of the towns. Usually there is just a gandourah tied about the waist with a leather girdle, bare legs, the feet encased in untanned leather boots, a very rough turban on the head, and a threadbare burnous. Over the shoulder is slung an antique muzzle-loading gun, while in their hands is always a long staff.
Their womenfolk go about unveiled and have little pretention to beauty, which is probably due to the hard life which they lead. They wear simple frocks, sandals and a kind of turbaned head-dress made of many scarfs wound one above the other. Their hair is thick and plaited round the head, leaving two coils to hang out on either side.
The accent of a nomad is quite different from that of the other Arabs; it is deep and guttural, much softer than the tongues of the mountains and of the north.
The hardest thing to realize when one meets these people is the fact that none of them ever possessed a permanent home or actually resided in a house. They were born under the tent, they were brought up there, married there, and they will die and be buried under a little heap of stones. Their whole outlook on life has been the open plain, the sky, the storm, the rain, the fierce sun of the Sahara; even the visits to the market towns have been fleeting. The family, which means everything, has been centered round the group of tents.
These tents are not, as might be supposed, gorgeously decked residences or even the tents we associate with shooting expeditions in India. They consist of a kind of very large blanket made of coarse camel’s and goat’s hair. This blanket is placed on posts and pegged down on three sides leaving the fourth open. On the floor are placed rugs and carpets, and in the case of a rich nomad one may sometimes see colored hangings on the walls, but this is rare, as simplicity is preferred.
When the man is married the tent is divided into two by another blanket and the man lives on one side and his wife and children on the other. When the camp is struck the posts are removed, the blanket is rolled up with the carpets and the whole is placed on the back of a camel or donkey.