Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/45

Rh of thousands of these ships of the desert are ever ready to course its billowing surface under the pilotage of their Arab captains, who put no monetary value upon time and who, compelled to gain a few francs for the necessities of life, continue to compete against the inconsiderate and unfeeling railroad. It is a cultural, economic struggle, one that this age has introduced throughout all the world between modernism and the vanishing past. With the construction of two or three additional trans-African lines, the stately burden-bearer will be forced out of his place in the social order and will reappear for his last service in the form of beefsteaks and sausages at the local restaurants and in that of babooshes, of saddles and water-skins and of sacks for dates.

The plain is traversed by several rivers, some of them dry for part of the year but indicated by the lines of rhododendrons, laurels and tamarisks that edge them. Soon the railway left the plain and began to climb the foot-hills of a rather mountainous region, where all traces of agriculture quickly disappeared and pastures replaced the fields. Nomad camps, as I have seen them in Asia, dotted the plains and slopes among the herds of sheep and goats. In some places we saw large black tents, striped with blue or white, and in the openings unveiled women in dark-blue dresses of very light material and decked with heavy jewels of copper and silver in really barbaric taste. The sub-prefect from Sidi Bel Abbes, who had received a copy of the telegram which the Ministry in Paris were courteous enough to send out regarding our coming journey and who was traveling in the compartment with us, explained to us that these