Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/95

Rh Oh, Tlemsen, town of matchless riders! Your streams, your air and the costumes of your women Place you above all the towns of Maghreb.

As for riders, streams and air, it is all very well; but, when it comes to the costumes of the women, this is quite another matter. Most unattractive wrappings cover not only the face, feet and the entire forms of the Tlemsen women, but even the eyes, Only occasionally, when men are around, is one of them unveiled for a short glance and then covered again by the protecting cloth. At the outset Zofiette was irritated by this, but finally became accustomed to it and gave up looking for "African beauties," calling them all "bundles of dirty linen." Hers was, I think, a true and entirely warrantable description.

For something over an hour after we left the Marabout and his circle of friends, we drove through the plain, admiring the advanced state of the agricultural development. At one place near the road we saw a long snake that had been killed and had had its head smashed. Our driver told us that it was a Naja and that this species was closely related to the well-known cobras of India. I think that he was probably right, for I later had occasion to observe these Najas in the south near Bu Saada and in Marrakesh, where I participated in one death-raid upon a goodly specimen.

After leaving our good road, we rattled across the stony bed of a dry stream, dragged through a sandy stretch that was lined with Berber figs and long-leaved cactuses, known in Spain as "pita clumbos" and related to the Aloë family, and finally drew out into the large