Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/199

Rh Shortly before eight o'clock the great portal of the Borj was opened to receive us, and our first day's journey into that far-off land of the Sahara was brought to a close. We had covered sixty-three miles, more than is ordinarily accomplished in a good day's coaching on American highways.

To sum up a first day's impressions of the African desert is by no means an easy task. The multitude and variety of the scenes that present themselves do not admit of immediate appreciation; nor, perhaps, do they fasten upon the imagination with that intensity which is left by the pictures of other lands. Yet this ruddy Orient is in itself a picture of intensest moods, a lasting conception from which is carried to every mind that is brought in contact with it. The weather-beaten crags, the shifting sands, the sands of unmoving and monotonous silence, the slowly wandering caravans, the long and weirdlike shadows which stalk over the surface in the horizontal light of the rising or setting sun, are all pictures that impress by their individuality; and to these are added others which are hardly less interesting or picturesque in their local color. It is, however, the oasis that is the redeeming pearl of the desert. No poetic temperament is needed to prepare one for the enjoyment of its coming. From miles of distance the eye fastens itself upon the tree tops; the dark green is a break in the landscape, and like the black shadow of clouds it seems to go and come, the gentle undulations of the desert throwing it now and again out of sight. We had penetrated but a moderate distance into the desert, but the coming of the oasis was a relief that can hardly be described—those dense groves of date palms and the circulating streams of water. What must, indeed, the oasis be to those who have wearily plodded its sands for weeks at a time! When we entered Mreir the sun had just set behind the palm forest, illuminating the sky with that soft African yellow which is the special privilege of the brush of Edouard Frère. The tall tree trunks rose against this in specter shadows of brown, silent monoliths as if rising from a silent grave. A more entrancing scene could hardly be imagined, and yet how different was the picture from that which is ordinarily constructed on the guide line of books and narratives!

With a constant departure from the views of old that one has held, a doubt begins to steal over the accuracy of almost every supposed fact in our treasury of knowledge. Was there not some reason to question the existence of those skeletons—the weary relics of departed life—which have from time immemorial figured as one of the dominant features of the Sahara? We hardly dared entertain a doubt on this point, but yet felt somewhat uneasy in our minds. Our skepticism was of short duration. Its skeletons were there,