30 SPORT AND TRAVEL PAPERS 



much game hunted down, the man operated upon is not idle, 

 but hard at work chewing the hard fat to reduce it to a soft 

 pomatum-like consistence. Only when thoroughly triturated and 

 made into a pulp by teeth, tongue, and saliva, is the material fit 

 to be applied to the now disentangled and straightened-out hair. 

 When everything is ready, small quantities of it are taken from 

 the churn, but replaced by more rough material, and worked by 

 the fingers of the operator into the hair, carefully, so that no 

 part shall be without. This completed, the hair is once more 

 divided, with the aid of the stick, into small masses, and made 

 into ringlets to hang down from the woolly clump on the crown 

 of the head, which has been worked up also and greased, to the 

 shoulders. Then follows another coat of fat over everything and 

 the task is done, with a result of the startling nature of which 

 both may be equally proud. Hair thus dressed resembles a very 

 full curly white wig, or more, perhaps, a mop thickly powdered 

 with flour, and is all the more remarkable in contrast with the 

 dark brown face it surrounds and adorns. The sun, however, 

 soon begins to act upon this charming arrangement, thus com- 

 pleting the process to the thorough satisfaction of the delighted 

 Arab ; the fat melts, little glistening drops form and presently 

 run down the ringlets and fall on to the shoulders, which are 

 soon covered with a shining layer of grease ; only thus thoroughly 

 anointed is he quite comme il faut. Clarified butter, resembling 

 the " ghee" of India, is most frequently used, simply, however, 

 because it is more readily obtained. When an animal is killed 

 and cut up, every little scrap of fat is pounced upon wherever 

 discovered and hidden away, generally in the waist folds of the 

 cotton garment, until wanted to adorn the hair. The fatty 

 matter is supposed to kill and prevent certain insects making 

 permanent settlement among the hair ; but whether it can always 

 be depended upon seems doubtful. The smell of this rancid 

 butter is most disagreeable to any one unaccustomed to it, and 

 when closely following a native who has lately been in the hair- 

 dresser's hands, almost sickening. The dense mass of hair, so 

 great a protection from the sun, where no other covering to the 

 head is worn, retains the smell long after all the oily matter has 

 run out and nothing remains but pieces of fibre, in the meshes 

 of which it was contained. 



Some sport among the sand-grouse at the well at dusk, 



