A KING OF THE DESERT

Hokitika Guardian, 6 January 1928, Page 4

A KING OF THE DESERT

(By Cyril Maude The Famous Act-or-Manager who was recently in North Africa.) It was was a hot afternoon late in October when our guide, Saouli Brahmin Ben Boulakras, took us out from Biskra in a tumble-down car as far as what he. called les dunes de sable in the great desert of Sahara. Me shooed off a variety of coppercoloured boys in red fezzes and strange super-pltis-four trousers, who kept whispering close up to us when Brahmin’s back was turned, a penny please, sixpence please. thank you very much!” and then lamely tried to do a cartwheel which would have made any little Epsom ragamuffin blush for his incompetency.

We had photographed a few specimens of these Arab children and then snapped my wife, bravely mounted on a snorting caincl. \Ve had sat down at a tiny ta.blc on the shady side of a little mud shack covered by an inadequate mud and palm roof and we had ordered lemonades, and had been informed by the Frenchman and his wife who actually live thert that business was very good indeed. We had pitied, to, the four little palms planted in small holes in front of the door and longed for their sake that they could he nearer the stream which worked its way out into the Sahara close by, eventually to be engulfed in its sandy vastness and then arise from time to time to form oases. Tl would have been such a comfort for those little palms, although as a stream it was not a tempting sight, being greasy and apparently full of soap suds. Wo gazed out over the desert and then hack at the great range of mountains where the weather began to add to the grandeur of the scene by introducing slight flashes of lightning here and there. Yes, it was all wonderfully stage-managed. Only one thing seemed lacking in the scene—wild animal life. We were not contented with the firing Scarabs which crawled at our feet.

Brahmin, under the influence of lemonade, began to look communicative.

“Are there many jackals about here at night?” I asked. “No,” said our guide, looking more than ever like Laban of the Scriptures. “No, not nowadays. A few perhaps nearer the mountains—oh, and many, many hyenas, for which we go limiting at times, which is just g-r-rand!” (He had been for a long expedition to Jericho years before with Andrew Carnegie and had acquired a perfect Seot-Arabian accent which he lapsed into occasionally!) “And then there are panthers, too—hut not down here in the desert.” “Any lions?” asked my little wife, with a. quaver in her voice, although she had been so brave on the roaring camel.

“No, not now—ah! hut yes, there was an old lion who use to bo banging around here some years ago near to the Jardin Land on—the Garden of Allah, you know! But lie was old, very old—quite blind, and very niiser-j-jblo in appearance, with very little mane, no teeth, and all patcliy-look-ing. No one interfered with him. He disappeared before the war and has never been seen again. Perhaps lie died somewhere in the desert, perlmos he got drowned in the river, he was so old and so very, very blind. He was kind and gentle, too. lie was never snappy, but. oh, how often he was

‘snapped 1 !” But what a finish to his career! The King of the Desert, sightless, scraggy, and broken down, wandering around the walls ot the Garden of Allah, picking up flic stray bits of erreasp they left about for him. The fallen monarch, the usr<l-up tragedian! No harm in him, just a lion! If you spoke to him lie would slink away. Last oHiis race in these parts. Poor oid tragedian! The last of the actor-managers, atul now only a movie actor, and blind!