THE ALGERIAN SAHARA, 37 
apathy among these gentry, some of them are generally to 
be seen stretched at full length on the pavement, wrapped in 
the universal burnous, which approximates so nearly in 
colour to sand and boulders, that at Boghari I used to find 
it very hard to distinguish them. Without a burnous you 
never see an Arab. These garments have no arms, but are 
open down the middle, so that when the wearer applies 
himself to manual labour, he must either throw one side 
over his shoulder or take it off altogether, and the lazy 
Arabs universally do the former. 
“Banish from your mind all high-flown sentiment, for 
there is nothing picturesque about them. The French 
have improved away the old stock, and the present people 
are their degenerate descendants. Not so the Chamba and 
the Touareg, wild tribes of the true desert, who still cherish 
a deadly hatred towards that people against whom their 
hardy fathers swore eternal enmity. 
There are very few French besides the military, and they 
lose no opportunity of endeavouring to render themselves 
more popular ; but it is misspent energy. The old antipathy 
still exists, and the Arabs are and ever will be jealous of 
them. By nature a distrustful people, they deem every 
improvement an innovation. Their masters may strive to 
ingratiate themselves by acts of kindness, but they cannot 
put down popular feeling, any more than they can obliterate 
the remembrance of the severity with which the rebellion 
of 1864 was met, a severity which perhaps was necessary, 
but which will ever rankle in the bosoms of a vanquished 
people. 
March 24th. Shot two Aquatic Warblers (Acrocephalus 
aquaticus). The legs are rather whiter than the Sedge 
Warbler’s, and the iris is not red as figured by Dr. Bree, 
but dark brown. I found them chiefly in the rushes. They 
are restless little birds, but sometimes they settle at the 
bottom of a reed, and then is the best chance of getting them.. 
