Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/44

 CHAPTER IV

A TWELFTH CENTURY MIRACLE-WORKER

NE beautiful sunny morning we sat in a railway carriage saying good-bye to the attractive little son and daughter of our friends in Oran, Monsieur and Madame Gomis. We were starting our westward journey to Morocco, with Tlemsen as our first stopping place. It was to take us six hours and a half by rail, though the distance was just over one hundred miles.

From our car window, once we were on the way, we could see a perfectly tilled plain, covered with grain, vineyards, fruit-orchards, olive-trees and vegetable gardens and extending to the shores of the large Lake of Oran, which is gradually drying up. Over all the plain were dotted the houses of the French, Spanish and Italian colonists, with their flocks of sheep and cattle about them and here and there a native lied. Along the side of the road, where occasional motor-cars flew by, trains of stately camels moved with measured tread and swaying necks, hailing often from far-away oases in the south or even from the Atlas Mountains. The Arabs still continue to use these camel caravans, even close to the railway, because of the cheapness of this method of transportation. It seems a bit of anachronistic folly; yet hundreds