Page:The Burton Holmes lectures; (IA burtonholmeslect04holm).pdf/198

 few moments since were suffering from cold begin to feel the heat waves rising from the sands to meet the flood of heat descending from on high. A little later and we are being grilled between two fires. In our day-dreams we imagine ourselves plants, gasping in a stifling hothouse,—a hothouse where the temperature is rising steadily and from which there is no escape. But ere this daily nightmare overtakes us, we pass, soon after sunrise, other travelers who like us are foreigners to this strange land. It is not a love of travel nor the promptings of curiosity that lead these men into the depths of Algeria. Stern duty drives, and many are the lonely, homesick lads who spend the fairest years of youth convoying military stores from fort to fort or garrisoning some God-forsaken almost man-forsaken island of this sandy sea. Yet these military trains represent the march of civilization and of progress. Needless to say the troops are French.

CHANGING HORSES

An hour later there files solemnly past a caravan of camels bearing the materials for the construction of a European building, doors, windows, roof, and flooring ready fashioned, to be fitted together on arrival at Wargla or some remoter post. This reminds us that France is little by little introducing new things to the desert people and teaching them