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 GODDESSES AND GLOBE-TROTTERS

toward the equator. That such assurance is most welcome you will admit when, after winding through barren valleys, between naked mountain ranges, the train emerges at last from the southern foot-hills, and we gain our first view of that sandy sea that rolls in all its vastness between Algeria and the Sudan. It is not like the desert we have always pictured to ourselves; we feel a sense of disappointment. We are, however, only on the borderland; there below us are the deep traces cut by the watercourses from the mountains; we must go farther south to find true desert wastes. But you will ask, "How shall we travel out upon this endless plain?" We almost forget that no camel and no caravan are necessary yet, that we may still roll on in railway cars for forty miles. We simply abandon ourselves to our book of tourist-coupons, the final page of which bears
 * sure him of food and sheltering shade during his pilgrimage