88 JOURNEY TO CENTRAL AFRICA.

in hanging bits of jingling brass to the bridles. They keep their donkeys close shorn, and frequently beautify them by painting them various colors. The first animal I rode had legs barred like a zebra's, and my friend's rejoiced in purple flanks and a yellow belly. The drivers run behind them with a short stick, punching them from time to time, or giving them a sharp pinch on the rump. Yery few of them own their donkeys, and I understood their pertinacity when I learned that they frequently received a beating on returning home in the evening empty-handed.

The passage of the bazaars seems at first quite as hazardous on donkey-back as on foot, but it is the difference between knocking somebody down and being knocked down yourself, and one naturally prefers the former alternative. There is no use in attempting to guide the donkey, for he won't be guided. The driver shouts behind, and you are dashed at full speed into a confusion of other donkeys, camels, horses, carts, water-carriers and footmen. In vain you cry out : " Bess /" (enough !) " Piano ! " and other desperate adjurations ; the driver's only reply is : " Let the bridle hang loose ! " You dodge your head under a camel-load of planks ; your leg brushes the wheel of a dust-cart ; you strike a fat Turk plump in the back ; you miraculously escape upsetting a fruit-stand ; you scatter a company of spectral, white-masked women, and at last reach some more quiet street, with the sensation of a man who has stormed a battery. At first this sort of riding made me very nervous, but finally I let the donkey go his own way, and took a curious interest in seeing how near a chance I ram of striking or being struck. Sometimes there seemed no hope of avoiding a violent collision, but by a series of the most remarkable dodges he gen-