44 RAMBLES OF A NATURALIST. 
places is covered with pebbles, and in others with small 
bright stones. On the sand he prefers to go barefoot. 
Socks are not worn by the poorer class. Every man carries 
a knife, professedly for eating, but also for defence when 
occasion requires, and I fear for offence also, the “piping 
times of peace” being not much known in those dark lands. 
It is slung round his waist, and kept in its sheath by a piece 
of string passed through a hole in the handle. All classes 
tattoo themselves more or less, and /enzza is in great re- 
quest among them, for staining their nails pink. 
Having added to our party an Arab named Ateya 
Banateya, whose local knowledge for the next few miles 
would be a great assistance to us, we now began to pass 
through a vast plain, slightly undulating, interspersed with 
dayats, each a mile or half a mile apart. Ateya inveighed 
against the French for imprisoning his son at Marseilles, 
who had joined in the revolt; while Mohammed beguiled 
the time with an account of how when a boy he had gone 
to war with his father, and killed a man by spearing him in 
the back; which was no doubt very plucky, but some rough 
unhewn stones by the wayside had a deeper tale for me 
than the exploits of either of them. I judged them to be 
the graves of wayfarers who had in all probability perished 
of thirst. They may have been the very cairns which 
Canon Tristram and Mr. Peed reverently contributed a 
stone to. Meanwhile I was on the “qui vive” for every- 
thing. [This region has been visited by only two ornitholo- 
gists, while the route from Waregla to Gardames is still a 
“terra incognita” to naturalists; for if the unfortunate 
M. M. Dupéré and Joubert, who were murdered near that 
city, made any collections, they perished with them. I 
am convinced that an expedition there would repay any 
naturalist, for he would infallibly meet with forms of desert 
life unknown to science, and I would recommend him to 
pay particular attention to the Chats and Larks.] 
