18 
PASSIONAL ZOOLOGY. 
surface was furrowed at all hours by thousands of water hens, of 
teal, of ducks — promises of eternal roasts and stews ; wh@re every 
gleam of the sun, that drew its luminous zone upon the surface of the 
water, was mirrored back from the scales of myriads of fish ; where 
the high grass of the banks, watered by natural brooks, served as 
country and asylum to worlds of snipes and water rails, as well as 
for sows of the mountain that came down to bring forth their young 
in the spring. He said besides, that in winter every tuft of rose- 
laurel on the plain, sheltered a woodcock, a rabbit, or a hare ; that this 
plain was paved with quail^', with partridges, and Carthage hens, from 
the sea to Mount Atlas ; that the jujube, the orange, the citron, the 
fig, the olive, the tobacco plant, and the vine, offered to passengers 
fruits that no one had as yet dared to appropriate, and that he had 
lived there eighteen months, he the third of a party in this enchanted 
solitude, with three francs, fifty centimes. The renewal of hostili- 
ties in 1839 had chased our Robinsons from their asylum. Then 
they retired into the cities to let the storm pass over, and to amass 
capital. 
Peace had returned, and all three, rich with respectable econo- 
mies, went to find happiness again, where they had left it. 
Joseph (the artist in stews) awaited his two associates on the 
banks of the Arratch, at the place of rendezvous. 
And the chief of the district, touched by this lively picture of 
the charms of savage life, which he had so often dreamed of in his 
sad youth, sought no further to combat the resolutions of the 
artist. He only promised to go himself to pay him a visit one day 
in the season of snipes, and forced him to accept in gratitude for 
future hospitality, a complete set of hunting accoutrements : a cut- 
lass, a saw, and all the ammunition he had about him. The chief 
of the district has not kept his promise, because he has been pre- 
vented by a brutal soldier, who had him arrested by gensdarmes 
for refusing to condemn two poor innocent colonists. 
If some Parisian hunter, wandering in the Algerian solitudes 
about these precincts, has ■ met with our savages, he has received 
from them, I am sure, a comfortable hospitality, and they have set 
hm on his road again, and the artist will have remembered, in honor 
of his guest, the secret of his most exquisite culinary recipes. But 
