38 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 fre-

quently 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 knock-

ing 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-car-

riers and footmen. In vain you cry out : " Bess I " (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 com-

pany 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 raia 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-