On arrival at Timgad my wife and I found the weekly Arab market in
full swing.
[Illustration: AN ARAB TAKING A SHEEP HOME FROM MARKET.]
It is not in the least like an English market with its tidy pens of
sheep and cattle and orderly arrangement of stalls, for this is a
dense crowd of white-robed Arabs, in the midst of which camels and
donkeys for sale stand about amongst tents full of clothes and corn
and seed, and strips of hide for making shoes.
And here and there in the dust are dark men cooking and selling
unappetising bits of meat and making black coffee, which is their only
drink.
Towards evening the fair breaks up. Those who have bought corn load up
great sacks of it upon their camels' backs.
The camel, as you know, squats down on the ground whilst its master
loads it, and during the process looks round and gives out
heartrending groans as if complaining at the excessive weight being
put upon its back, but when the load is adjusted, the animal gets up
and walks away quite contentedly.
The camel can travel long distances for days together without drinking
fresh water, because his throat is fitted by Nature with bladders,
which he fills with water before starting. When he feels thirsty, he
ejects one of these out of his throat, and then drinks the water from
it.
Others of the Arabs who have been attending the fair mount their mules
or donkeys--often two of them on one mule--carrying their purchases
with them, in some cases even carrying live sheep across their
saddles. Many of them crowd into coaches to go home. These are
rickety-looking boxes on wheels with roofs to them, drawn by six
horses, which travel three abreast.
When they were all comfortably settled in one of these coaches ready
for their journey, my wife stepped forward with her kodak to
photograph them. In a moment they were tumbling out of their places,
hurrying to get out of the range of the "Evil Eye"--for that is what
they think the camera must be; they fear it may bring sickness or bad
luck upon them.
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