Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/29

Rh the church, the hospital and the fishing hamlets are on these two islands. On the third is the cemetery.

To the starboard we were now passing Cape Milonia, which is already within the bournes of the Algerian territory. Soon the low, flat shores disappeared and yielded to the towering wall of the Tajera range, which dominated the horizon.

As night wore on, we had a glimpse of the beacon on Rashgun Island, and later, with the coming of dawn, we skirted along the rocky, bay-indented isles of Habibas, carrying great scars from their struggles with the waves, and entered the strait between the two capes, Falcon and Mers el-Kebir, whose powerful beacons had guided us forward through the last hours of the night. To the eastward of the southern point the Bay of Oran cut its way into the line of the shore, deep and always calm. But Oran itself was not visible for some time, only clusters of small houses here and there dotting the mountainous shores. These surely could not be Oran, one of the largest French towns in Africa with a population of some two hundred thousand souls.

I was about to phrase this question in my mind to a fellow-passenger when suddenly a high mountain with rocky, precipitous sides came into view. On a naked rock at the top of a precipice overhanging the sea a church, surmounted by a statue of Our Lady, stood out in bold relief. It was erected during a devastating cholera epidemic brought here in 1849 by Arabian pilgrims from Asia Minor, who wanted to round out their pilgrimage to Mecca by a visit to the tomb of the sage and saint, Sidi Abd el-Kader el-Jilani, in the