A SKETCH OF AFRICAN WARFARE. 193 



are swift and bold, it is the retreat of an invading force which 

 is always the most dangerous. 



When the Arabs are taken by surprise on a night march, 

 they fight fiercely for their tents and their herds, but when 

 all resistance becomes useless, they retire slowly, sheltering 

 their wives and children by their desperate charges, and 

 when they have placed them beyond pursuit, they return to 

 the battle-field more numerous and ferocious than ever, and 

 strive to regain what they have lost. 



The spectacle of an Arab column migrating from one place 

 to another, with all its tent equipage, its baggage, with camels 

 ladened with women and children, and forty thousand head 

 of cattle of every kind, and its thousands of mounted horse- 

 men, winding slowly over the desert, is at once beautiful and 

 imposing. 



Suddenly the head of a French column moves in sight, and 

 the picture changes from the stately march to the maddest 

 disorder. The column hurries up, and if the troops have 

 with them a battalion or two of infantry, the day is lost to 

 the Arabs, who can do nothing more than charge the flanks 

 of their foes, without effecting any great injury. 



But the affair becomes more serious when our cavalry 

 come to the attack alone or in numbers insufficient to 

 surround the Arab column. The enemy then forms into 

 scattered bands, and furiously with wild cries they charge 

 against our troops, aiming at those points they find the 

 weakest. The smoke and dust add to the confusion of the 

 scene, and form a veil from which the white bournous or the 

 red flame flashes out as the Arab wheels in his rapid evolu- 



