The Daily Dispatch: March 2, 1864., [Electronic resource]

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Eating grass.

A French officer who, on one occasion, accompanied a raid against an Arab tribe in Algeria, gives an instance of the spirit of defiance which animated those haughty sons of the desert. The French commander had assembled the Arab Chiefs, and, telling them that his soldiers had filled up their wells, carried off their cattle, and burned their

dwellings, exhorted them to submission, asking them what they would do further against a country so powerful as France.--"The Arabs, as if impelled simultaneously, stooped to the earth, plucked some scant blades of grass there growing, and began chewing the same in angry silence. This was all their reply, and by it they intimated that they would eat what the earth gave, like the beasts that are upon it, rather than surrender."

Eating grass is not very agreeable, but it is better than eating dirt. The Southern people, if subjected to such an alternative, will not show less spirit than the Arabs.