Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/36

20 mosque, where a fountain gurgled low into a marble basin filled with goldfish, an old muezzin with a face that showed much suffering related in excellent French this story of its origin. Near the fountain lay a beggar in rags, with his swollen face covered by sores and with scores of flies swarming over him. Heedless of these and of all life's other minor worries, he slept peacefully in the shadow of the palms, lulled by the rhythm of the mountain stream that found its way beneath the walls and streets of the city to this quiet fountain.

We remained in Oran for some days and visited all the different parts of the city, the usual French town with its inevitable Boulevard National, its Place d'Armes, Place Kléber and Place de la République. To see these it is not worth while to go to Oran, to suffer from seasickness and to be melted and fried by the African summer sun. However, the Promenade de Letang is very picturesque with its terraces and its Chateau Neuf, whose old walls enclose what are now military buildings but which served in earlier days as the palace of the relentless Spanish governor or of the pirate beys of Oran. In Letang Park we saw beautiful specimens of magnolias and fig trees, the latter with twisting branches that resembled some writhing, fighting reptile monsters, and, beyond these, pines, plane-trees, palms and innumerable beds of brilliant and rare flowers. From the sloping terraces of the Park one can look out across the twenty miles of sea that stretches eastward from Cape Falcon promontory.

But from an opening in the north wall of the fortress of Santa Cruz there is an even more beautiful and more