houses, fantastically ornamented with cart-wheel windows, triangular lightholes, and loopholes of strange device-in fact, freemasonry run mad. After passing through the city school, an open yard where the usual crowd of urchins were chanting prayers from whited boards, we dismounted at the kasbah, an irregular pile of crumbling towers, and, descending by a low archway into a sort of subterranean den, found ourselves in a square court open at the top, or rather in a roofless tower. All around massive palm-trunks formed not unsightly pillars, with the usual arcades behind them. Goats, sheep, luggage, saddles, and camel-furniture occupied the centre, which St. Martin appropriately termed the Messageries Impériales. But not only were the kadi's sheepfolds thus brought within his walls: we found that a bolted door behind us was the prison, and a Hadj, locked up for vagrancy, yelled forth his prayers for our benefit during dinner so obstreperously, that St. Martin ordered him to be silenced. He retorted by rebuking his ingratitude, since he was only praying for our conversion.

The next morning we were to start before daybreak, as St. Martin wished to review his awkward squad and to arrive at Biskra in time for déjeûner. Omar, under his tutelage, had our share of goods actually loaded in time, notwithstanding his fatigues from an eighteenmiles' tramp on foot yesterday, the result of the commander having ordered off the camels before the loiterer was ready.

We crossed a few belts of moving sand-hills making their last struggle against the Tell. As the morning

broke, the mountains were very fine. A rocky range finely chequered with bright red and dark brown partially masked the Dj. Chechar. Behind these again, a

dark and nearly parallel range towered sombre and grand in the distance. It was the richest portion of Numidia of old, the Mons Aurasius of the Romans, the Djebel Auress and Beni fe'rah of the Arabs. Flashing in the morning sun, a diamond set in mountains, at the distance of thirty miles, were seen the precipitous white cliffs which form the salt-rocks of El Outaia, and a rosy blush was cast on the snow-line far above.

As we neared the dark forest of the oasis of Biskra, land was cleared for barley, little asses laden with brushwood were trudging to town, sheep's skulls scattered here and there in the path testified no lack of mutton. Many Arabs passed us-the women unveiled, dusky, dirty, miserably clad; but a tawdry handkerchief, and a few silver ornaments in hair and ears, hinted that even ill-usage and hard work had not altogether extinguished vanity.

The oasis, unlike any others, was not a mere mass of crowded palms, with a village in the centre or on the edge, but an extensive fertile tract, with groves, gardens, open fields, villages, interspersed in all directions. The barley was already (Jan. 21st) in the ear. We were on a macadamized road! watercourses on either side of it, and a young but promising avenue in genuine French taste. Gnarled old olive-trees mingled with the palms, behind which peeped the ruins of old Biskra, with its ancient Turkish fort, now, with the exception of a good Turkish bath, wholly demolished by the French. It was here, in 1846, that the French garrison was massacred to a man by the natives.

Turning to the left, at the end of a long clean avenue we saw the low stone-built edifices of the new French town. An old Algerian friend, who possessed the best private house in Biskra, had most kindly offered us the

344

CAPTAIN PIGALLE'S MANSION.

СНАР, ХХ.

use of his mansion in his absence, should we ever find ourselves in the oasis, and the commandant, whom we met at Tuggurt, had accordingly most considerately sent on notice of our expected arrival. We were met by an Arab servant, and, quitting the convoy, surrendered ourselves to his guidance. The first building in the village-like and open town was the school founded by the conquerors to instruct the natives in French literature, and which all aspirants for employment must attend. It was a single-storied and colonnaded building. Opposite were the kadi's house and public stables, of a similar character, spacious and handsome. A little further on, and at a window sat a lady with flaxen curls. It was the bower of the solitary fair lady of Biskra, the Prussian wife of an English officer attached to the Bureau.

as

We rode down another street, when a door was opened, and a civil French servant greeted us expected guests. We entered, and a door opening upon a neat parterre disclosed a small salle à manger, with table spread, clean white linen, long-necked bottles, French rolls, and a bright wood-fire on the hearth, with the other, to us novel and unwonted, adjuncts of civilization. Off this was a richly-furnished bed-room, and a library beyond it. We were installed in the countryhouse of Captain Pigalle, who was absent with his regiment. As we surveyed our petrified, grizzled, travelstained faces in the mirror, we felt ourselves the only pieces of inappropriate furniture in this exquisite little ménage. We did justice to the viands and Bordeaux, took a bath, unpacked; and the evening found the desert-wanderers seated in white gloves and ties at the soirée of Madame R

CHAPTER XXI.

Biskra Parisian tourists-Struggle of the desert and the TellBotanical garden- Farms and gardens Omar's faithlessness Formal trial and judicial separation Our ex-warrior groom Novel application of the trial by ordeal - Ingenuity of the detectives Hot spring - Peculiar fish- Our last Sunday at Biskra, and common service Col de Sfa El Outaia - Saltmountain - Natural warm baths - Benighted on the plain - The last of the oases- Gorge of El Kantara - Roman bridge - Grandeur of the pass - Farewell to the Sahara.

Departure

INSTALLED in our luxurious quarters at Captain Pigalle's, even P., impatient as he was to reach the East, was tempted to rest and civilize for a week.

Biskra, being that point of the Sahara most easily attained by tourists, is generally assumed as a fair specimen of an oasis. It is actually visited by a weekly diligence from Constantine, in which dusty Parisians sit half-choked, or look out occasionally, in the hope or fear of seeing a lion. Arrived at Biskra, they spend two mornings in the Café Billard, lately erected, and saunter out in the cool of the evening to smoke a cigar under a palm-tree, and to stare at the grimy Arabs under their tents. Thus "le tour du Désert" having been made, the bourgeois returns to pour forth sententious nothings about the progress of France and civilization in Africa.

But though the whole country from Biskra to El Kantara is geographically part of the Sahara, it is influenced, as might have been expected, by the vicinity of the Atlas, and partakes much of the characters of a debatable land. Tillage and cereals are struggling, and not altogether without success, to hold their own

against flocks and palm-trees. Its situation, combining the advantages of a perennial stream from the Dj. Auress with the temperature of the tropics, furnishes great facilities for the botanical and agricultural experiments carried on at the Government Pépinière. This is yet in its infancy, but has produced fine samples of sugar, both from the West Indian cane and the Chinese sorgho," of cotton and indigo, while various Senegal plants are cultivated with success. The best varieties of the date-palm are also collected, in order to distribute the seeds to native planters.

66

I found M. Jamin, the director, an intelligent and enthusiastic botanist, who has made a magnificent collection of upwards of twenty thousand dried plants. He mentioned, what my own search corroborated, that in the whole desert but one orchideous plant, one single fern (the maidenhair), and only two bulbs, a very small allium and a small crocus, are found. In looking over my collection, which had suffered sadly from mould and too hasty packing, he found at least two new species of dwarf shrubs, which I gave him to send to M. Cosson for description in his projected work on the Flora of the Sahara.

There is an interesting collection of cottons, and of wheats upwards of seventy varieties, including some twenty from Egypt, Abyssinia, and Central Africa, side by side with all the principal English varieties; thus exemplifying how very little wheat is affected by climate, and how, like man, it can adapt itself to extremes of temperature. It is sown in October, and reaped in February or March, and it is only the limited supply of water which prevents the extension of the arable land.

The Wed Biskra is generally a scanty stream in a