Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/104

88 train pulled out, to a monotonous, rhythmic song rendered by the voices and instruments of this local orchestra, which we later learned took a prominent part in religious and other ceremonies.

Once away from Tlemsen, the line climbs ever higher and higher until it reaches a plateau bordered by greensloped mountains and so well watered that the pasture is not only plentiful but almost as rich as that of Switzerland, a fact which attracts to it many nomads with their herds of sheep and cattle. Close to the railway and farther out across the plain were scattered gituns, or big white tents made of a woolen material and striped in black or brown, around which women in their dark-blue abaiyias, with silver ornaments in their ears and about their necks, and troops of naked children constantly moved. Farther off the herds were grazing under the watchful eyes of the shepherds, clad in their white bournouses and armed with their strong pastoral staffs to guard their flocks against the all-too-possible attacks of the jackals or the occasional hyenas that lie in wait among the rocks of the mountain ravines.

The train passed through tunnels, cut through ridges topped with rock and then rumbled for some distance along a French-built aqueduct that furnished water to some agricultural colonies which the green of their olives and fig-trees and of their smaller shrubbery, covered with the pink blossoms of the laurel, began to bring into our view against a background of the already-yellowing grass. It was here also quite patent that the nomads were profiting by the example of the white immigrants and were beginning to till the soil, evidenced by the fact that