has enabled him to cultivate a taste for horticulture

and natural history, and his gardens and menagerie at Blidah are ever open to strangers, to whom he is delighted to point out every object of interest; and the ruthless hero of many a Zouave camp-fire tale can scarce be recognised in the gentle savant, cultivating his herons, cranes, and water-fowl.

General Yusuf is not the only European who has served under the Moslem banner. A Frenchman, now high in the diplomatic service of his country, taken prisoner when a lad, and finding escape or exchange hopeless, conformed to the religion of his captors, and made the pilgrimage to Mecca. Though he afterwards found means to escape, and has since done good service to France, the Moslems continue to honour him by the title of Hadj (pilgrim), and firmly believe that he is still one of themselves in heart, and only a Frenchman by necessity. They appear to hold it impossible that one who has visited the shrine of the Prophet can ever be really a renegade.

The opportunities afforded to a Christian, in Algiers, for examining the interior life of the Mussulman population, are very few; yet there are some of their ceremonies to which admission may be obtained. Among these are the "fantasia," or entertainments, of a Marocain sect, which are frequently given by the richer natives. Being invited one evening to accompany a friend, after climbing many precipitous back streets we entered the low doorway of a Moorish dwelling, and found ourselves in a small courtyard open to the sky, with light pillared arches in antique arabesque supporting a cloister round it, and a verandah above, over whose balustrades a row of veiled Moorish women were leaning and gazing down on the scene below. The floor of the centre was paved

with bright tessellated tiles. In the midst squatted the dervishes, or Beni Yssou. Round three sides the musicians sat on the ground, beating large tambourines, and swinging their heads as they accompanied their voices in a low measured chant, which never varied more than three semi-tones. Nothing could sound to our ears more monotonous than this unvaried wailing cadence, no music less capable of inspiring frenzy. The fourth side of the square was occupied by a young man sitting cross-legged before a low table, on which lay a bundle of tapers and a long lighted candle. Near him was a chafing-dish, over which he frequently baked the tambourines. One of the musicians, in lieu of a tambourine, held a huge earthen jar, with a parchment cover stretched over its mouth, which, by incessant drumming, produced a bass groan deeper even than the other instruments. Shrouded spectators occupied the background; and a few Moors, and one or two Frenchmen, the front and sides, without the pillars. We were accommodated with a form and courteously supplied with coffee and pipes from time to time. Meanwhile the courtyard filled and became a vapour-bath. The dervishes having now worked up the steam, a huge negro with grizzled-grey moustache rose, plunged forward with a howl, and swayed his body to and fro. He was supported by the attendants, stripped of his turban and outer garments, and accommodated with a loose white burnous; he then danced an extempore saraband in front of the lights. Meanwhile he had been anticipated in his excitement by a little boy in the rear, whom we had noticed on the stairs behind, for the last twenty minutes, gradually working himself into an ecstacy, rolling his head and swaying himself on his seat, apparently unconscious and unobserved. The black had

now become outrageous; his eyeballs glowed and rolled as he grunted and growled like a wild beast. The musicians plied the sheepskins with redoubled energy, and the din became deafening. The negro craved for aliment. They brought him a smith's shovel at a red heat. He seized it, spit on his fingers, rubbed them across its heated edge, found it not sufficiently tender, blew on it and struck it many times with the palm of his hand. He licked it with his tongue, found it not yet to his taste, and handed it back to the attendants with evident disgust; squatted down again, glared carnivorously, and was gratified by an entremêt of a live scorpion. This he ate with evident relish, commencing carefully with the tail; but his voracity was still unabated. Next a naked sword was handed to him, which he tried to swallow, but failed, the weapon being slighly curved and about a yard long. He recommenced the saraband, brandishing the naked sword after a fashion very promiscuous, and not altogether satisfactory to the spectators, as he cut the candle to pieces, and made the musicians dive to avoid him. He then attempted to bore his cheek with the point, then to pierce himself in the abdomen; setting the hilt at times against a pillar, then against the ground. A friendly fellow-fanatic assisted him by jumping on his shoulders, but all to no purpose. He was evidently for the nonce one of the pachydermata; his hide would rival the seven-fold shield of Ajax. Now several maniacs simultaneously howl, stagger forth to the centre, and repeat the same extravagances; not omitting the dainty taste of scorpions. Three of them at length kneel together before the presiding Marabout, or chief of the dervishes, who benevolently feeds them with the leaf of the prickly pear; which they bite with avidity, and masticate in large mouthfuls, spines and

all. Others repeat the shovel exploit; and one sturdy little fellow, a Marocain, naked to the waist, balances himself on his stomach on the edge of a drawn sword, held up, point and hilt, by two men. Then he stands on it, supporting a tall man on his shoulders. Altogether the din of the musicians, the pleased "Sah, sah," of the spectators, the howls of the maniacs with their waving figures and dishevelled hair (for the dervishes do not shave), the heat and stench of the apartment, the wild confusion of the spectacle, might make a visitor fancy he was looking on some mad unearthly revel, where fanaticism had turned fiendish, and demoniac worship domineered it over men. We waited till long after midnight; still the revel continued, and wearied and disgusted we gave the accustomed dole to the Marabout, and retired.

I have since witnessed these exhibitions, or fantasias, in various parts of Africa. In their main features they are all alike: the same din of tambourines and the same monotonous chant; exciting the performers to raptures of ecstatic frenzy. Generally, but not always, the actors are professional dervishes; frequently, as in the case of the boy alluded to above, indifferent spectators are wrought into a similar state of excitement, and sometimes they, too, will roll on to the fire, and masticate the prickly pear. However it may be explained, it seems in its nature entirely distinct from the professional jugglery of Europe. There can be no sleight of hand or deception in the feats performed. The body seems for the time insensible to the ordinary feelings of pain, the muscles are worked into a state of unnatural rigidity. I have felt the muscles of the stomach, and even of the breast, harder than the contracted arm of the sturdiest oarsman in training, and the skin as tough

as the driest leather. The spine of the prickly pear is one of the sharpest prickles in nature, and yet the performers will devour leaf after leaf without the slightest symptom of pain, and without a trace of blood in their mouths. They do not even take them into their hands so as to avoid the points of the prickles, but allow the bystanders to put them into their mouths. When the excitement has passed away, they suffer from extreme bodily prostration, and are said to be incapable of exertion for two or three days. The only apparent stimulating cause is the monotonous music, and yet these people will listen for hours, without the slightest emotion, to the inspiriting martial music of a French band, and pronounce it far inferior to their native noises. Can it be that the Arabs have learned and practised an anæsthetic or mesmeric power for ages before it was discovered in Europe? And all this, like the spiritrappings of America, is under the guise of a religious or spiritual celebration! How strangely similar are psychological phenomena in all ages and countries! It is a curious circumstance that these devotees call themselves Beni Yssou, "Sons of Jesus," and quote a text of the New Testament in proof of their divine origin ::-" Behold I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you."-Luke x. 19.

We witnessed one morning a yet more degrading ceremonial. In all countries there will be found among the most ignorant some debasing superstition, and it is to be feared that the traces of Fetish worship in Algiers are not worse than may be discovered elsewhere, under the shadow of a purer and holier faith. A morning stroll led us to a secluded nook by the shore, where under the rocks three fresh fountains of sweet water bubble forth within