DINING FROM ROAST SHEEP.

Matamata Record, Volume XIII, Issue 1104, 10 March 1930, Page 3

DINING FROM ROAST SHEEP.

Far removed from the ceremonial banquets o’f which the British Prime Minister must recently have felt a surfeit in the western w>orld, is his account of an Arab feast appearing in the London Graphic. The scene is a tent in the Great Sahara, the floor covered by carpets, of local make, in white, red, and blue. Round a table three or four inches high the host —the Bach-Agha of the district —and his guests squatted on long rolls of cushions in gay dyes. “ The piece de resistance,” says Mr Ramsay MacDonald, “ was the roast sheep brought in with ceremony by a huge negro, and placed in the middle of the table in a great tin dish. The Bach-Agha first broke the neck, and with the invocation, ‘ Bismillah ! ’ set us the example to fall to, using our fingers to pick the flesh. “ When the coffee came, the old man produced a pipe for himself and cigars for us, and we sat enjoying the flavours of life, nursing our knees.”