Many of the readers of Harper's Young People will be both surprised and sorry to learn that there are parents who are not only willing to sell their baby girls for a few pennies, but when this can not be done, to cast them out upon the highways to perish either by the wild beasts that prowl about at night, or by the fiercely glaring sun that heats the sand so that even a dog will not venture out at noonday for fear of burning his paws.
"Where do these cruel people live, and who are they?" I hear a bright little girl ask.
They are the Arabs who inhabit the deserts of Kabylia and the Sahara, in and south of Algiers, the most northern country in Africa.
"Ah, but the Arabs live in Arabia, don't they?" objects my young friend.
Yes, they do; but centuries ago the Arabians, or Saracens—desert dwellers, as they were then called, Sara meaning desert—sent out large armies to conquer other nations. These Saracens swept victoriously through Northern Africa up to the heart of Spain.
Algiers is now a French province, but the greater part of its people are descendants of its ancient inhabitants, called Moors, and their conquerors, the Arabs, together with negroes from Soudan, French colonists, and a sprinkling of Turks, Maltese, and Spaniards.
Neither the Moors nor the Arabs think much of little girls. The latter—especially the poor ones—are sorry when one is born; but when a boy baby comes, they make him presents, and a bowl of "mughly"—a compound of rice flavored with sugar and spices, and sprinkled with delicious nuts—is given to each relative.
A Moorish girl of even rich parents is considered well enough educated if she can make preserves, and dye her finger-nails with henna leaves. She is not treated as unkindly, however, as the little Arab damsels, who are compelled when quite young to work very hard. They have to draw water from the wells in heavy leathern buckets; to churn; to feed and water the young camels and horses: in fact, they live more like slaves than daughters of the family.
MARIA IMMANUEL.