Evening Star Newspaper, June 10, 1923, Page 73

' Part 5—8 Pages - Woman Strategy and Courage Disguised as a Moslem after having taken infinite pains to learn the language of the Faithful, even to committing to memory passages from the Koran and the Mohammedan prayers, Mrs. Rosita Forbes, an Englishwoman, explorer and talented writer, set out from Jedabia, after first reaching that point trom Benghazi (capital of Cyrenaica), on the Mediter- rancan, to penetrate the fast- neeses of the Libyan desert. This s a vast branch of the great Sahafa. Her purpose was to visit Kufara, the forbidden city of the Sen , an oasls, or group of oa hundreds’ of miles from civilizAtion. Her remarkable experiences are de- scribed in four articles, of which this is the first. At the outset she achieved the apparently impossible and won the support of Sidi Idris, head of the powerful desert family of the Senussi, recently made an emir and called on an important mission to Italy. Sidi ldris gave her letters of safe conduct. But should her disgulse be penetrated by fanatics these letters would not necessarily protect her— and besides fanatics and brig- ands she had to beware those chiefs who scorned Sidi Idris’ authority. She took with her a fellow explorer and friend, an ;‘duxalcfl Egyptian, Hassanein e —_— BY ROSITA FORBE:! ARTICLE T TURNED to the sandy track ran between the blind mud walls that T had seen | in so many countries. “I feel” b said, “as if T had left behind me the Rast shred of ecivilizat:on. The sim- Wlicity of life is beginning to impreg- mate me. “Flessing has bewitched me. When w Wicave the desert T shall be a Moslem. The great adventure began at Jeda- | Thia, 190 kilometers from Benghazi as “he crow flies. It is only a group of “soattered sand houses, with the m: tierlous windowless walls of the east, flung down on a wide space of white | rock and sand, vet it is the home of ‘the great Senussi family. We arrived sthere on a November day, having wome by divers methods across the wtretch of stony desert which Hes to khe southwést of Benghazi, the capital ©f Cyrenaica. The amiable relations existing be. tween Italy and the Senussi made it easy for us to reach Jedabia as the guests of the most hospitable govern- ment, but henceforth it was left us to tend for ourselves. We could not take our kindly hosts into our cbnfidence, as they would have been aghast at the idea of a Voung woman's venturing alone into a territory as yet unexplored. I realize it would have been very diffi- | cult for them to Imaginé that. the woman they saw with her French hat veiled in drooping lace, and high Teels to match the red of her striped <loak, would metamorphose herself jrto a Bedouin and attempt a journey they looked upon as altogether im- possible for a European and exceed- ingly \difficult even for an Arab. Benghazi days. There were so many ceremo- nies—a review, a great dinner in the | pyupils of the zawia$, religious fanat- | things that day. Zovernor's palace in hanor of Ttaly's new ally—which brought streams of .Arab notables as well as Europeans 1o witness the fireworks from the Hassanein Bey as | 1 believe that old Bedouin's | had, been en fete those | SUNDAY . MORNING, JUNE 10," 1923 Dares Death' in Desert to Visit Secret City of the Sahara riage, a fanatic of the most bitter type when It was necessary to im- press the local mind, my Imam when we prayed in public, a child when he lost his only pair of primrose yellow slippers, a cook when we stole a bot- tle of Marsala from the last Italian fort and chased .a thin~hen till, in desperation, she laid an egg for our zabaglione! He also made the dark- est plans for being a villain and mur- dering any one who interfered with our affairs, and I nervously listened to tales of sudden disappearances In the Sahara. Ten minutes after leaving Benghazi the white®towns with its slender min- arets had disappeared into the sand, and our camions crawled like great | gray beetles over a sunlit waste, with | here and there a line of camels black gainst the horizon.. | Kufara, the Kababo of old, lies| | some 600 kilometers south, faintly | | southeast, of Jalo. It is the heart of | the Eastern Sahara and the center of | | its trade, for the only big caravan route from the Sudan and Wadai to | the north passes through it, yet the journey is so difficult that none but | the strongest caravans can attempt it. | To me Kufara was almost a| | mirage. It represented fhe secret | | which the Sahara had rigidly guarded | |for so long against Christian eyes. | | The tragic story of Rohifs' ill-fated | | expedition fired my enthusiasm to | | reach this center of the world’s most | confanatical fraternity, the unknown, | mysterious country untrod by foot of | | stranger, be he Christian or Moslem. | Having regard to the amazing diffi- | | culties of the journey and the almost maniacal hatred with which stran- | gers are regarded, it is natural that, | with one possible exception, no Euro- | | pean should ever have been able to | | reach the sacred cluster of zl.whui (schools) and morabits (holy place) | at Taj. A French prisoner spent some | | time in Kufara during the war; he| | was sent there from Uau Szerir by | order of Sayed Ahmed. | x ok ok % ! (JVER forty years ago a German ' | explorer made a very gallant at- | | & { [tempt to solve the mystery of the| | far-oft oasis. Ie had to oppose atred of the ekhwanc(brethren) and | | i Ccombinea n ics, the villaghrs who jealously guarded the Privacy of their country | and the passing caravans of pilgrims | and merchants. After being held a| YQ&@MQ%Q@QQ%QM@%Q%Q%@%W@@% ¢ ¢ ¢ Great Adventurc Begins in Mediterranean Séaport——Spics Surround Her While Preparations Are Being Made for Journey—Kufara, the Forbidden City, Guarded for Centuries From Pro- ¢ faning Touch of Any Nasrani, or Christians—Visited Some Forty Years Before by European, 3 Who Narrowly Escaped Death—French Prisoner Taken There During War. > ¢ DD DD DD DD T D QQ_W@@%Q'WQQQQQQQ.@QMQWW ever Hassanein Bey and I were study- | ing the Koran or writing notes. We | were never able to relax our vigi-| lance for a second. We knew that every word we uttered would be overheard and repeated. * ® ¥ X AZAAR rumor spoiled our first| plan, which was exceedingly sim- | ple. We meant to persuade an ekhwan to accompany us to see some neighboring village, where there would be a suppositional marriage or other festa, and from there drift on. We had not reckoned with the fanati- cism of the Moslem. Tales of a wealthy Christian woman about to travel into the interior spread like | a bush fire. Mustapha came to me | with lurid tales of throats cut almost within sight of the suq (market) Sayed Rida himself explained that no Christian 1ife was safe beyond the boundarles of Cyrenaica, and that any one supposed to have money was | immediately marked for the lawless bands who awapt out of the desert, seized thelr prey and disappeared into the limitless sands as ants upon an English lawn. We learned many T confess to feeling a certain pang when I realized that I must leave every single European garment be- hind except a pair of riding boots and | wide verandas of his excellency’s | prisoner for nearly a month in his| breeches and a woolen sweater. dwelling. I saw the emir (Sidi Idris) standing aloof from the chatterirg «rowd, his retinue by him, and won- «ered what he thought of us all. Half 1he guests were of his own race and <reed, vet not here was his real king- dom, but FORBES. Bedouins who spring to horse or camel at his word, among 1he hundred thou- sand pllgrims who learn the law from his zawias! (colleges). We stood together on a wind- swept balcony and looked down at a wild dance of Abyssinlan soldiers. A thousand black figures, each bear- ing a flaring torch, gyrated madly in the moonlight, velling hoarse songs of victory and proweks. The tiiree things a man may bé justly proud of in Abyssinia are killing a lién, an elephant or his enemy! The fantastic dance we saw might celebrate one or other of these achievements. 5 ok okx :ru moment the last gun an- nouneing the emir's departure for Ttaly, had been fired, Hassanein Bey and I climbed into the car most kind- 1y lent by the govérnment. When he first_consented to accompany me- to the Libyan desert, where his knowl- edge of the langpage, religion and customs was invaluable to me, Has- sanein Bey assured me that he came for a rest cure. Later on he assumed £0 many characters that it was some- ‘what difficult to keep count. He was always the quartermaster general of our ifttle expedition and he used to preduce macaroons .at the' most - posstble moments from equally .im- possible places! & He was a chaperon when elderly shelky @pmanded my hand in mar- among the ten thousand | {lonely camp, in daily fear for his! lite, he was helped to escape by an | Arab triend. | Now Hassanein Bey, having been | secretary to the Italo-British Mission | which arranged the treaty of 1916 with the Senussi, was suspected of | the darkest Pan-Islamic designs. For |a week at Benghazi we lived in a State of suspense. Intrigue was in the air and every onme suspected the motives of every one else. If a camion broke down, we decided that we were not to be allowed to reach Jedabia. 1f Hassanein spoke to a Beduin, using the Moslem salutation, the eyes of our so-called interpreter would al- most pop out of his head with inter- est and dismay. Relays of kindly individuals took the utmost interest in our, history, plans, ideas and belongings. We were “pumped” until we could not think of anything more to say; and we, in turn, “pumped” every hospitable and amiable Individual who politely and indifferently asked us our destina- tion! | However, once Jedabia was reached we felt happler. The open desert lay before us and the lure of the great tracks south! Sémewhere far beyond the pale mauve line of the horizon lay the secret of the Sahara, the oasis which had be- comne the goal of every explorer, from the enthusiastic coast guard officers who dreamed of forcing a -trotting hajin through the sands to the gov- ernment whose camions and light-car patrols had failed to pierce the waterless drifts. We sent to ask if Sayed Rida, the brother and wakil (steward or lieu- tenant governor) of Sidi Idris would receive us. He offered us immediate- 1y a house to live in while we were in Jedabla. He wanted to give us instantly anything from horses to dates. Our peace, however, was short- lived. For the first few days at Jedabla we were in fool's paradise. All around us lay the desert. It seemed 5o easy a thing to hire a few camels and a ‘gulde and disappear oveér the rim of the horizon. By the fourth day we had discovered a few of the most important difficulties. Firstly, there were no camels. There had been an excellent harvest. The Beduln was rich and he didn't wapt to work. It was impossible to ex- plain the exact destination of the caravan, for the Holy Oasis is far beyond the bourne of most camel drivers’ dreams. Secondly, all work had to be done in secret, because the whole of our household were spies with the pos- sible exception of the black cook, Ali. Mustapha had been in- the Ufficlo Politico and he dutifully reported the minutest of our doings. The head of the police, the stalwart Mabruk, was also not averse to Latin gold, 8o he placed his brother to watch us-as hotse boy and. lest that were not ‘sufficient, he sent us a mysterious servant whose head appeared sud- denly at the glassless window when- When we decided on flight as the only possible means of leaving Jeda- bia, we.asked Sayed Rida for a guide. He gave us Yusuf el Hamri and Mo- hammed Quemish and, calling them into our presence, he told them that if anything happened to us, whether by their fault or not, they would die immediately. The men accepted the statement as undoubted fact. Sayed Rida took us for a drive in his car In the afternoon. There are no roads or even tracks beyond Jeda- bia, but the sand’ is hard and smooth. The Sayed thought it would be a good thing to show himself openly with us, and indeed, our fame increased after that drive. When we returned the whole of our household had attired it- selt in clean white garments and there was an awed moment while they all reverently kissed the Senussl’s hand. We discovered that one Mannis- mann, a German,” had been killed by his own Arab guard a few hours out- eide the town because he had 12,000 pounds in gold upen him. We heard that the Tebu tribes of the group of oases erroneously known as Kufra (really Kufara) have not entirely sub- mitted to the Senussi rule and, conse- quently, still attack any caravans traveling bevond Taiserbo. campaign to correct the impression of me, as a rich Christian woman. I discarded hat for a beautiful kufiya (head dress), given me by the Sayed. rly and late 1 could be heard reciting verses of the Koran. Moreover, we used to wander through the Beduin camps which fringed Jedabla, talking to the wom- en and gradually gaining their con- fidence. 3 If a sheikh, a Hajl, came to us, 1 used to murmur the “Shehada” to him: “Ash hadu illa Tllaha ill Allah wa ash hadu inna Mohammedan rasul Allah”" upon which he generally blessed me warmly. After a few days 1 was greeted enthusiastically and introduced to the solemn-faced babies adorned with silver amulets and my EN ROUTE TO THE SECRET CITY OF THE SAHARA. 7 taught how to bake flat, heavy bread in mud ovens. g * x k% ! T 18 amazing how perfect is the wireless telegraphy system of the | desert. One night, dining with Sayed Rida I remarked that I was so glad | there was no electric light and that I | liked the local coloring and primitive lighting effect in Arab houses. This was tranglated into the basaar into, | “She is a Moslem. She hates all Eu ropean thinss. She wants to keep th. old customs as our fathers had them. We knew our campaign had suc ceeded on the eighth day, when, after | the chief spy, despairing of getting a glimpse of us any other way, had brought us as a gift an absurd black | |bird with a bald head, a brother of | Ali, the cook, arrived from his camel's ! hair tent. He greeted us kindly and | told us that the Beduins were in sym pathy with us, that they knew we were Moslems and of their own blood, Even then our kindly host was not satisfied, but insisted on sending an |escort with us, ten soldiers of his | guard, coal-black slaves, under a com- mander called Abdul Rahim. He also determined to settle the vexed ques- tion of camels once for all by send- ing a caravan of his own to Kufara to “SAYED RIDA HIMSELF EXPLAINED THAT NO CHRISTIAN LIFE ‘WAS SAFE BEYOND THE BOUNDARIES OF CYRENAICA.” bring back some of his belongings | feel the strain of our sleepless nights | and allowing us to travel with it. To any one who does not know the east, it would now appear that thin were successfully settled, but neither camels nor soldiers appeared. Unfortunately it was a race against me, for every one was growing sus- inexplicable desire to | th | picious at my | stay =0 long In a little mud village on | the edge of the world. The political aspect was always before their eyes. |In their anxiety to know whether | Hassanein Ber can Eevptian) was {plotting a Pan-Islamic empire with the thirty Egyptian ex-coast guards {who had taken refuge with the Senussl during the war, they over- | |1o0ked other possibilities. We felt that we had one last card |to play that they would never sus- | pect—making our flight at midnight. | We were loathe to use it, however. | We waited patiently for the camels | that did not come, and fenced desper- ately for time. | The lounging white figures in the suq (market) stared at me curiously. | They had stomed a “Christian dog” from Zuetina the day before, but I was the Saved's guest. Mustapha said: “The Sayed is great. All the people fear him. Otherwise they would kill every Christian in the country.” We decided definitely, on a simple but somewhat desperate plan. We felt we should be allowed only two or three more days in Jedabia without an open fight, and we could not be certain of the twenty camels neces- sary for the caravan. Therefore, we deciddd to leave practically all our luggage behind and go off in the mid- dle of the night. * ok ok % ASSANEIN left me to fill in details. flight on two camels and the caravan g1asped essentials and must followed,” he said. We sorted out an extra week's pro- visions to add to those we had al- ready prepared and the rest we put into big sacks, with the intention of sending these lattter at midnight. when the spies were sleeping peace- fully, to some place where they could be stored until the dilatory camels arrived and the caravan started. They would then be packed unos- tentatiously with all the rest of the loads and when we joined the cara- van a few days’ journey on the way to Aujela, we should recover our most necessary provisions. We ourselves, with the tent, two rolls of bedding, a fortnight's provisions and two suit- oases, chiefly containing films, medi- cine, apparatus, candles, soap, etc., would disappear the following night in Beduin clothes. At 1 am. then, Hassanein, shrouded from head to foot in a white jerd, was waiting just outside the main door. A few minutes later there was the faintest scratch on the heavy wood. Almost before he had pulled it open seven dark figures, muffied up to the eyes, utterly unrecognizable, slipped into the yard. Not a word was ut- tered. Dexteriously they shouldered the provision sacks and stepped away into the night without a murmur. Let no one think it is easy to get into Beduin feminine attire for the first time. The tight white trousers presented difficulties over riding breeches. The red tobh (dress) was too tight at the neck. The barracan (long cotton garment) needed much adjustment, It is all held in place by a thick, red woolen “hezaam” at least twelve feet in length, which is wound round and round till one's waist re- sembles a mummy and {8 tied one side with dangling ends. Under this 1 wore my revolver belt, with two g ! oA 4| fully loaded Colts and a prismatic compass in a case. Nevertheless, here was freedom at |1ast and excitement thrilled us. There | was a moment's pause on the part of | 0l |our puzzled guide when absolute | blackness on all sides zave no hint of direction. Then a muffled roar told | us that & camel was on our left and 1oomed up beside a broken wall. T soon hoisted myself on to my | camel, a huge, blond beast, with no proper saddle. On the folded a couple of native mats and | thereon I pefched in my uncomfort- |able, closely wound clothes, which made mounting a matter of peril and difficulty. In spite of all this, when | my great beast rose to his stately height and moved off into the night, exhilaration rushed over me. * X ok ok T was a wondertul start. Sir Rich- ard Burton wisely writes that the African traveler must always be pre- pared for three starts—the long one) the short one and the real one. Later we realized how right he was, but camels swayed off into the darkness beyond the white morabit, we only felt that we had escaped. “How amazing that they can find | their way in pitch darkness like this!"” I exclaimed, and only when Orion had appeared in four different directions {did T begin to wonder whether they could! We had started just before | three, striking a northerly course which surprised us, as we knew that Aujela lay to the south. We com- forted ourselves with the idea that | the main track, and patiently we bore the icy wind and constant change of direction. When, after an hour, we turned completely round, we decided it was | necessary to expostulate. Yusuf, on being shown a luminous compass, re- fused to believe that the north was where the needle directed. We point- ed out the extraordinary movement of the stars and he remained uncon- vinced. We continued our aimless progress for another hour. As we were merely describing ir- regular circles we were not surprised | when a little before five a chorus of | dogs barking proclaimed our neafness to Jedabia. “It is an encampment,” said Yusuf. *“I know where we are now!” and at that moment the don- | key in the sug braved quite close to us! In a few minutes our desperate midnight flight would land us before | the doors of the house from which we had escaped so triumphantly three | hours earlier! The wind searched out every cor- | | ner of my aching body. I began to . Feeding the — Wash DREDS of people visit the Washington Zoological Park | Jevery week. Some weeks the hundreds become thousands. They look at the animals and watch the animals. They feed the animals— against the rules, of course—and even | train some of them, but rare, indeed, | is the person who inquires as to how the creatures live, and what, when | and how much they eat, Old Brother Bruin has to have a special kind of bread baked for him. His loaves must be made of a mix- ture of graham, bran and wheat flour, into a heavy and coarse bread |that exercises his digestive organs. Brown bears, black bears, cinnamon bears and polar bears all require this bread. ,They have just two meals day, as all the herbiferous animals do, with grass in the evening, and besides bread, they eat a small amount of meat or fish, some green vegetables, and occasionally cooked | rice. ] | There are at present in the 200 twenty-six bears, including cubs, and three of the cubs are recent additions. | These new cubs are being fed an in- teresting diet. They have bread and | raw eggs, mixed with plenty of cow's milk to 1ap out of a platter, as sup- plementary feedings to nursing their mother. Quite like modern bables, ! formula and all. Polar bears eat a little more of everything than do other bears, par- to say, they take kindly to grain and vegetables. They do get some greens in their own home regions, however, as back from the water a few green things grow in the summer-time. “Sit up, EIi,” said a visitor to a big brown bear the other day. “Lift your front paws. Now lift your right foot,” Eli lifted the left. o, I said the right foot, Eli,” and Eli changed. “All right, Eli, here’s your stick of candy.” This was repeated many times, but | Eli lifted the wrong foot every time ‘and patiently changed. He looked as though he would do any amount of work for that stick of candy. Trained with peanuts and candy, the visitor said, just by standing outside his cage that way. i Another visitor had the sea lions diving for taffy. Evidently water does not spoil a sweet tooth. And as for sweets, did you ever give sweet choc- olate to deer? They are perfectly crazy about it. Ducks and swans like sweet chocolate, too. jn fact, all the Zoo folks are partial to sweets, unless the lions, tigers and their cousins arb exceptigns. But sweetmeats are not on the bill of fare of any of them. They only get them on the sly, as it were. Their regular meals must become horribly monotonous—the same old thing, day in and day out, until sum- mer comes along and gives them frseh grass, greens and more vege- tables. For instance, old man Hippo gets two meals a day, consisting of six- teen quarts of cut-up vegetables mixed with ground bran or other ground grain. In the.evening, instead of supper, he gets forty-five pounds of hay or grass. Now, would you not think he would welcome summer and real grass? i top were | for the moment, os our little line of | our guides were purposely avoiding | s | ticularly meat and fish, and, strange | and days of suspense. Even my sense of ‘humor had gone. Tt was five weeks since we had left England and we had got no farther than a sand heap outside Jedab But we slippcd away without detection Further troubles threatencd whe w discovered that our retinue Yusuf, Mohammed and two | black Sudanese soldiers, had brought | no provisions of any sort. They had | trusted either to us or to joining the southbound caravan within few hours. Consternation seized us In | order to travel light we had brought what we considered the least possible amount of food necessary for two | people for a week—that is, one tin of meat per day, with a very small | ration of flour, rice, dates and tea How were we going to feed six peo- ple for perhaps a fortnight on it® We showed them the pathetic limit of our provisions. They said, “The cara- van will come tomorrow! Inshallah:" " About one we came to a small clus- ter of camel's hair tents in the shelter of a slight rise and the retinue clam- ored to stop there for the night. The Arab is greedy by nature, while the Sudahese is positively voracious. At one meal he will devour what would support a European family for a day * x x T 6 next morning Yusuf woke us with a cry ot “El Fagr,” and after the usual prayers we set to work to break camp. We informed the retinue that we Intended to reach Wad{ Farig and its well that day and | therefore they must not count on a midday halt. Consequently they in- sisted on making a fire and cooking half our week's rations straight away! We started at 2 a.m. and con- tinued a southeasterly course all day That night as I undressed in the | “harem” portion of the tent, which had enormously impressed our re- tinue, T pondered on’the character of these men with whom we were to live in familiar intercourse for months. Apart from their fierce fanaticism, which made it a duty for them to kill the infidel and the Nas- | rani as we kill dangerous and pes- tilential vermin, they had the sim- plicity of children. 1 felt that our blacks would steal all our food one day, if they happened to be hungry and defend us most gallantly the next. They are utterly unable to pro- vide for the morrow. 1 realized that if the caravan did not arrive we should die of exhaus- | tion on the © to Aujela. Let us once lose the way, let a storm delay |us, let the retinue prove unreliable |and insist on eating more than the | day's meager ration and we should be lost! Yet we were determined on |one thing only—not to go back. (Copyright. 1023.) Animals ington’s Zoo i coal- The monarch | Buftalo, gets of the plains, exactly King the same diet, only different. His ground grain is not mixed with vegetables, as he |is .not usea to vemetables on his native heath, and he has a | private dish of his own that is always kept on tap in his cage or run—a ball of rock salt for him to lick whenever he sees fit. Neither the hippopotamus nor the buffalo eats meat, which is also true for such animals as the elephant, camel, kan | Baroo, antelope and all their kind the mountain goats and sheep, the | deer, the fowl family and such small | creatures as squirrels. | The sea lions eat fish exclusively | getting two meals a day. And a very ange thing has happened in con- | nection with monkeys and meat. The |nead keeper, Mr. Blackburn, says | that before the world war he gave all the monkeys roast beef with their other food—two meals a day of cook- ed rice, evaporated milk, eggs, nuts | and sunflower seeds—but that during the war it was so difficult to get beef for them that he substituted horse- meat. Of all the ninety odd monkeys he had to feed not one would touch the horsemeat. Another human trait. though humans are sald to have caten horseflesh without knowing it, the monkey, apparently, can tell the difference. So as beef is still pro hibitive in price the monkeys are get- | ting no meat at all and are thriving just as well. They do love their roast | beef, though, says Mr. Blackburn. The mongoose and tayra—some, kin to the antelope—get their two meals of raw eggs, cooked or row meat and raw fruit, particularly banana. But the alligators and snakes take the cake for diet, if you can cal] it cake. For thegalligator eats raw fish, raw meat and rats and mice that .are either alive or killed fn traps, he does not care which: The snake, or rather. the large snake. such as the python, somewhat similarly eats and ducks, killed or allve, } The feeding times for the alligators and snakes are curious. An alligator receives a meal only once every twe weeks and the snakes have three or four meals after every time they shed thelr skins, whick occurs. in this eli- mate, once every six weaks. Then the snake dozes off: until skin-chang- ing time again. Among the hirds there are, of course, carnivorous swls, hawks and eagles, getting, as do all carnivorous animals, one mead a day of raw meat or fish. But among the feathered tribe we find a more interesting and greatly more privileged character. In fact, Monsieur Peacock is by far the most pampered personage in the Zoo He wanders, as does the proverbial will-o'-the-wisp, footlose and fancy free, wherever he wishes to go, visits the yards of many of the animals and preens and primps himself in the roads and paths for the delectation of visitors. He is friendly with ani- mals and humans, chiefly when there is food to be gained by it, for when food is brought to other animals in goes the peacock to look it over and see if there is anything to his taste, such as grain, bread. vegetables, etc Mr. Blackburn says the peacock suc- ceeds in feeding himself so well that they do not bother with regular meals for him. MARY N. 8! WHITELET, rats, mice )