Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/46

30 were Arabs from the Sahara, who come north in search of pasture for their herds and for the ready money they can make through fortune-telling, healing, shoeing some horses and stealing others or even taking part in certain Moslem ritualistic ceremonies.

Sidi Bel Abbes is one of the largest stations along the line, a French town that is growing with an extraordinary rapidity which is induced by the magnificent agricultural development in the whole of the adjacent region watered by the Mekkera River. The picturesque little town is smothered in fruit-orchards and boasts some few fine buildings and the barracks of one regiment of the Foreign Legion, in which many Poles and still more Germans were serving. As far as one could see in all directions the countryside was covered with the farms of colonists, most of whom are Spaniards. A Frenchman told me that the second generation of these settlers become readily naturalized and that the children attending the French schools have a very marked assimilative influence upon their parents, This Bel Abbes region is one of the most fertile and best colonized sections of Algeria and sends great quantities of grain, wine, olives and cattle to both the local and the export markets. Big modern tractors and ploughs and other agricultural machinery are to be seen everywhere throughout this whole landscape, which extends all the way to Tlemsen.

Just previous to reaching Ain Fezza, the last station before Tlemsen, we ran through a number of tunnels and over a beautiful viaduct of light construction that bridges the deep, picturesque ravine of the El-Ourit River and gave us a magnificent view of several cascades that