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 LODGINGS FOR LATE-COMERS

NEW BISKRA IN 1894

find that it is as we suspected,—there are no rooms reserved for us despite our pleading telegrams. We try the other houses, but in vain; we look disconsolately upon the two new hotels, magnificent but unfinished, whose walls are rising slowly as the lazy laborers pile one sun-dried brick upon another, and then we return to accept the landlord's ultimatum, the terms of which are after all not harsh. We get one end of a hallway, a mattress upon the floor, two chairs, a bowl and a pitcher, and a curtain to screen us from the public gaze. Later arrivals are put to bed on tables after