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Here and there there were oases of dry ground, generally holding several heavy guns and dumps of ammunition. Whilst at intervals the swamp was intersected by a wooden road, used by the lorries to bring up ammunition, and by two or three duck-board tracks which ran winding through the awful mess of mud and water.
Notwithstanding all this, some few Saharan merchants there are who really detest this traffic, and its attendant immoralities. Such I have found in my later peregrinations through North Africa. Fezzan, as vulgarly computed, is said to contain one hundred and one towns and villages, or inhabited oases. The districts are, 1st. Mourzuk, the capital; 2nd.
He had brought an aloe from Tripoli, and planted it in his garden. It is the only one. He has another tree or two besides, which nobody else has. The merchants have brought the varieties of the date-palm from the different oases of The Sahara. Nearly every householder has a garden, and some several.
The whole administration of The Mountains, and the Saharan oases of Tripoli, is conducted on the same principles of finance and extortion. I am lodged in the house of my camel-driver. They wonderingly admire everything I have. The greater part of these women never left their mountain-homes never saw a Christian or European before and this is the reason of their surprise at my appearance.
They feigned illness, or fled in the night with their camels into the vastness of the desert, their faces turned once more to the west. For soon, if they stayed, they would pass beyond the zone of known oases, into the terrible land of mystery, charted by no man, a land where it was said the sun had dried up all the springs of water.
The desert extends up to the neighborhood of Uzun Ada, and the railway stations form so many little oases, made by the hand of man. It is man, in fact, who has planted these slender, sea-green poplars, which give so little shade; it is man who, at great expense, has brought here the water whose refreshing jets fall back into an elegant vase.
How much happier and freer they were than Arab girls, how much purer though gayer was the life at Ouargla, Queen of the Oases, than at any other less enlightened desert city; how marvellous was the moulet-el-rass, the dance cure for headache and diseases of the brain; how wonderful were the women soothsayers; and what a splendid thing it was to see the bridal processions passing through the streets, on the one day of the year when there is marrying and giving in marriage in Ouargla.
To wake up in the clear air, with the bright sky above us, when it was pleasant; and to reach at night the little oases of willows and birches and running streams where we camped, was enough to repay us for a good deal of discomfort. At one of the camping-grounds, Cow Creek, a beautiful bird sang all night; it sounded like bubbling water.
Up into the purple-velvet night whirled sparks and fire-tongues; red smoke spiraled on the vagrant desert breeze. "A signal-fire, Master!" whispered Rrisa. "It will be seen in far oases. If it burn two hours, that will mean an enemy with great plunder. Others of the Beni Harb will come; there will be gathering of the tribes. That fire must not burn, M'almé!" "Nor must the Beni Harb live!"
The account of the expedition of the Shereef Mohammed, who penetrated as far as Wadnoun, and which took place more than three centuries ago, as related by Marmol, leaves no doubt of the ancient ambition of the sovereign of Morocco. And although this pretension has now been given up, they still claim sovereignty over the oases of Touat, a month's journey in the Sahara.
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