Recollections of George John Cayley 



The family of four had spent the summer in the island of 

 Majorca ; they had sailed away from Algiers with part of 

 their furniture and their three big Spanish donkeys. On 

 the island they had sparsely furnished an empty house; they 

 had lived sometimes in tents, riding their donkeys from 

 camping ground to camping ground. Now, with their 

 furniture and the donkeys, they had come back to their 

 house in Algiers. Whilst they were settling in was 

 opportunity for friendly relations to grow up between them 

 and their neighbours. 



If fairy gold may turn to dry leaves, there are dry leaves 

 that in some hands turn to gold. Mr. Cayley took the 

 common things of every day and made of them adventure 

 and romance. 



The two families met early and late. Ir, by some 

 mischance, there were tiffs in the morning, before the 

 morning ended there were meetings to explain away the 

 foundationless " bad dreams." With Mr. Cayley their 

 neighbours often rode the Spanish donkeys ; at first were 

 inexpert at sitting a pack, fell off" and rose from the 

 dusty ground to mount again, perhaps to fall again. The 

 riders climbed the steep, paved, narrow Arab lanes ; they sat 

 their steeds and drank coffee at the Arab coffee-houses 

 found here and there in lovely out-of-the-way places ; they 

 listened while Mr. Cayley, in Arabic, exchanged greetings 

 with the coffee-makers ; they halted on the Roman bridge 

 to look long at the red river that flowed under it and 

 curved and turned and was lost in yet another bend. The 

 river flowed not with water, but with red anemones. (The 

 red river flows no longer, it is said ; the neighbours have 

 not been back to see.) Then on again over the sunlit 

 ridges and down into the shadows of the valleys — for thus 

 the land lay in a region beyond the heights of Mustapha 



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