Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/599

Rh to the sun the heat that they have received from the fiery luminary, and hordes of wandering Tuareg's, armed with gun and spear, still patrol the caravan ways that penetrate to the interior.

With all the wild, fitful, and forbidding Nature that belongs to the Sahara, it has also its elements of peace and good will. The cheer of a green oasis is, indeed, one of its first greetings, and long before the great flat expanse of sand is reached the traveler approaching from the north looks down upon an island of emerald verdure. The oasis of El-Kantara, the "first oasis" of the desert on the great caravan route leading to Lake Tchad, backs up its sea of palms to the very walls of the Great Atlas, and far into the gateway itself the feathered dates scatter themselves to meet the poplars from the north. How different, then, is this first view of the Sahara from that which the mind had pictured! It was late in the afternoon of an early September day, with the thermometer steadily rising from perhaps 92° to 98°, that we approached this land of true Africa. The bare and rugged rocks roll off from either side of us, to mingle with the almost endless wilderness of bowlders which cover the mountain foot, far off to the limits of vision. We pass caravans and parts of caravans, the swarthy children of the South contemplating our passage with at least the interest with which we drink in their picturesque garbs, the complacently meditating camels, the trains of yelping Arab curs, and children galore. How different the two modes of travel, and what feelings must the contrast inspire within the minds of these poor toilers of the desert sands!

A few days after our first approach to El-Kantara we returned to it for the purpose of better studying the character of this first oasis of the desert, and of entering into that delightful pursuit of searching for the evidences of past life in the neighborhood. We had been informed that fossils, mainly of a marine type, with beds of giant oysters, were to be found here, and, indeed, under the guidance of two Arabs who were well familiar with the region it did not take long to verify the statement that was made to us. The mountain slopes, especially where they had been furrowed into successive lines of depression and elevation, were teeming with the fossilized parts of an ancient fauna of the sea; sea urchins and oysters were particularly abundant, and their beautiful state of preservation added not a little to the delight of gathering specimens of their kind on the borders of a relentless desert.

To those who still conceive an oasis to be a gathering of a mere hundred or so of palm trees, protecting in its shade a basin of water that is hardly sufficient to quench the thirst of a few dismal-looking men and animals that may have straggled to it, the impression produced by the oasis of El-Kantara will be a pleasantly and