Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/109

Rh finally came out upon a good motor road, which ran between the low adobe walls that enclosed the houses, gardens and small farms of native proprietors and soon brought us out on the Angad plain, which has the character partially of a prairie and partially of a stony waste. Industrious French and Spanish colonists have, however, subdued it in places to rich plantations of grain of several varieties, tobacco and vineyards and are planning to put in cotton and flax with the confidence that these new crops will give excellent results. The range of Beni Snassen is visible on the horizon, while behind it lies the rich plain of Triffa, patterned by groves of almond-, olive-, and juniper-trees (Juniperus communis) and by forests of oak.

Ahead of us in the distance a long, dark line of vegetation gradually raised itself. As we drew nearer we made out the feathery foliage of palms and, after but a few minutes more, were already within the Sidi Yahia oasis. Olive-trees, terebinths (Pistacia Terebinthus), weeping willows, date-palms, oaks and yoke-elms grow along the banks of the flowing streams whose waters are drawn off into canals and carried down to supply Ujda and the neighboring plantations. The vegetation is rank and exuberant, in places forming thickets almost impossible to penetrate. Behind a white wall and among some tall trees rose the domes of the kubbas of the patron saints of Ujda—Sidi Yahia, Ben Yunes, Bu Cheikh and Sidi Thaleb. The wali Sidi Yahia is respected by Moslems and Jews alike, both of whom believe him to have been John the Baptist, who announced the coming of the Messiah. There has long been dissension among the