A LION HUNT IN THE VALLEY OF OURTEN. 385 



the woods, but could not tell where he had entered it again. 

 In order to relieve, in some degree, the labor of the trackers, 

 I took my position on the edge of the forest for the remainder 

 of the hunt, and at night we heard the lion roaring at half 

 a league distant, and before morning he had taken off a sheep 

 a short distance from our station. On the next morning, the 

 order was given at daybreak, forbidding any men or herds to 

 leave the douars until the return of my trackers, so that the 

 trail of the lion might not be effaced by the tracks of the 

 cattle coming after him. We then quietly waited at our 

 bivouac, the coming in of the huntsmen. 



Presently they appeared one after the other, covered with 

 the marks of their hard walk in the mud and among the 

 thorny bushes, and took their seats among the crowd of Arabs 

 that were squatted around my mat, and gave their stories as 

 follows ; 



Report of Bilkassem Bil-Eouchetz : 



" I took the track at the douar hedge, and followed it to 

 the skin of a recently killed sheep, thence to the brook where 

 the lion stopped to drink, and there I left it on finding the 

 sign of Amar-ben-Sigha, who had taken up the trail at this 

 place." 



Amar came up at the moment that his brother tracker had 

 taken his seat. His face was beaming with pleasure ; he had 

 no need to speak, every one read in the gleaming of his eye, 

 that he had turned the lion, and was sure of what he was 

 about to say. As he passed through the circles of Arabs, 

 one would pull him by the burnous, and another would 

 interrogate him by word or gesture, but Amar held on his 

 way, zealous to confide to me alone the secret his telling 

 features could not retain. 



Poor fellow, how little he thought that the battle he 

 snuffed so eagerly would leave him torn and motionless on 

 the field ! 



17 



