



Produced by David Widger






HALIMA AND THE SCORPIONS

By Robert Hichens

Frederick A. Stokes Company Publishers

Copyright, 1905


In travelling about the world one collects a number of those trifles of
all sorts, usually named "curiosities," many of them worthless if it
were not for the memories they recall. The other day I was clearing out
a bureau before going abroad, and in one of the drawers I came across a
hedgehog's foot, set in silver, and hung upon a tarnished silver chain.
I picked it up in the Sahara, and here is its history.

*****

Mohammed El Aid Ben Ali Tidjani, marabout of Tamacine, is a great man in
the Sahara Desert. His reputation for piety reaches as far as Tunis
and Algiers, to the north of Africa, and to the uttermost parts of the
Southern Desert, even to the land of the Touaregs. He dwells in a sacred
village of dried mud and brick, surrounded by a high wall, pierced with
loopholes, and ornamented with gates made of palm wood, and covered with
sheets of ir