Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/74

58 Noticing that we had been depressed by this recital and the bearing of it upon the case of the wailing woman, Mahomet called a passing carriage and announced to us:

"I shall take you to Ei-Ourit and show you a beautiful landscape."

Our driver carried us through the town and out upon an excellent macadamized road, leading to Bel Abbes and eventually Oran, which wound itself up the slopes of the Tlemsen range. This highway overhangs and gives a commanding view of the plain below, that is cut throughout its length by the deep ravine of the Safsaf River. On the upper side of the road rocks of warm pink raised above us a receding wall that finally disappeared in the blue immensity of tire sky. Here and there it was broken abruptly by jutting shelves, and then branches of olive-, fig-, plane- and pomegranate-trees appeared over guarding hedges of a cactus known here as the "Berber's fig" and bearing fruit along the edges of the fleshy, spike-covered leaves, which slowly transform themselves into the brown, tough branches of this strange plant, so common throughout all North Africa.

At a turn of the road we were shown the mouth of a deep cave, which, before the advent of the French administration, had served as the den of a band of robbers, who attacked caravans and travelers. The cavern bore the name of "the jackals' grotto," a title well deserved, in that these brigands were a bloodthirsty gang, sacrificing everything to their quest of spoil but cowardly at the same time, as they attacked only in numbers or set upon unarmed travelers.

It was four miles out from Tlemsen that we came upon