At Casa Blanca, though the French hold their own, the
Arab tribes outside are constantly attacking French positions with great boldness, and continual sniping goes on at long distances. As Mr. Hands, the special correspondent of the Daily Mail, puts it in his Friday's telegram, any Arab with a gun that will carry fifteen hundred metres, hidden behind the crest of the next undulation, drops bullets into camp, trusting to luck to hit something. Mr. Hands holds that the only way to stop this ridiculous situation is for General prude to be allowed to advance and attack the Arabs. But this at present he is forbidden to do by distinct orders from Paris. On Wednesday a very picturesque but unsuccessful charge took place. At twenty minutes to one a body of Moorish horsemen, riding in close order, came over the crest of the nearest hill, firing from the saddle, and quite indifferent to the artillery and rifle fire which they had to face, and got within five hundred yards of the camp. The latter part of
the charge seems to have been specially picturesque, for about two hundred white-clad warriors were led to within five hundred yards of the entrenched infantry by a Kaid dressed entirely in red. Though every one tried to bring down the Red Kaid, and though heavy guns from the fleet, field-pieces, and rifles were one and all trained upon him, be seems to have borne a charmed life. Happily, the Moorish cavalry does not seem to be very well led. Considering the undulations of the ground, and the defective positions imposed upon the French owing to their orders not to advance, it looks as if an attempt by, say, a couple of thousand mounted Arabs to "gallop the camp" in open order might be successful. In the Red Kaid's charge the Arabs evidently began to gallop much too far away from their objective—observers put it at two miles— and thus their horses were exhausted at the place where they should have gone their hardest,—that is, the last five hundred yards. They also rode in close order. Such attacks should in formation resemble a cirrus not a cumulus cloud.
