Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/97

Rh Fish, and has been considered sacred and possessed of healing powers."

From here Mahomet led us on foot out of the village and into a deep ravine of the Safsaf River, where we found a hot spring flowing from the mouth of a cave, which was encircled with thick bushes and reeds. It is called by the natives "the miraculous hammam." We also found fish playing about in this spring, frequently breaking the surface with their jumps and darts after insects. I later heard from Algerian zoologists that they had found blind fish in the hammam, which had evidently come out with the water from its hot subterranean sources, a phenomenon similar to that which I noted in Lake Nogan Kul in Northern Mongolia and referred to in my book entitled Beasts, Men and Gods.

As the sun had already gone down before we left the spring and we had still a long and difficult road before us, we scrambled down the rocky path back to Aïn el-Hout, lighted the lamps on our carriage and returned to Tlemsen.

We spent the following day roaming about the town. In one quarter we wandered into a caravanserai, where we found a motley crowd of men who had come from every direction and over great distances, strings of camels and dozens of donkeys, all in a conglomerate mixture with wooden cases, bales of wool and other merchandise. Everywhere about the court Arabs, Berbers, natives from the Sahara and other heterogeneous types were bartering wares, playing cards, eating and drinking tea and coffee. Yet all this went on in a setting of almost incredible silence, quite different from what it would have