Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/341

Rh Through and beyond this we could see the immense plain of Zusfana, which dropped gradually down until it was lost in the sandy hills of the Sahara. In the bottom of the valley the eye feasted upon a dark, green sea of splendid palms, some million of which the oasis of Figig counted as its own. The inevitable wonder-working river flowed between the towering hills of golden sand and down among the palms on its largess-distributing progress to the south. Until recently the Zusfana was considered an affluent of the Niger, but the celebrated geographer and authority on the Sahara, Professor E. F. Gautier, has proven that the Zusfana disappears in the sands of the desert to the south of Figig. Possibly it is a subterranean affluent of the Guir.

Dotted among the palms we could count seven pink villages and, set apart from them, the white, picturesque buildings of pseudo-Moroccan architecture which form the most advanced administrative French post in southeastern Morocco. The settlement comprises only four officials with their families, a doctor and some native cavalry. There are no colonists at all. In the surrounding seven villages some fifteen thousand natives lead their entirely different, primitive life, counting among them also about five hundred old Moroccan Jewish families. Near by in the desert, in the alfa-prairies and in the mountains camp thousands of nomads.

As we drew up before the residence of Colonel and Madame Pariel, we were met by smiling and most polite Arab servants. Escorted in to the terrace, we beheld a most pleasing fruit-garden with an avenue of palms carrying great bunches of golden dates. It was amusing to