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There had been cities in this desert, too, where once were oases, now overwhelmed, except perhaps for a sand-choked spring.

A.C. Gregory, coming from the northwards by Sturt's Creek, discovered the Denison Plains, and it may be that from the head of the Murchison River going northwards there are to be found, near the heads of the rivers above alluded to, many such grassy oases; and, looking at the success which has already attended the stocking of the country to the eastward of Champion Bay, and between the heads of the Greenough River and Murchison, it will be most fortunate for our sheep farmers if you discover any considerable addition to the present known pasture grounds of the colony; and by this means no doubt the mineral resources of the interior will be brought eventually to light.

The wilderness through which they passed has not yet quite lost its characteristic features, the bewildering monotony of the pine barrens, with their myriads of bare gray trunks and their canopy of perennial green, through which a scorching sun throws spots and streaks of yellow light, here on an undergrowth of dwarf palmetto, and there on dry sands half hidden by tufted wire-grass, and dotted with the little mounds that mark the burrows of the gopher; or those oases in the desert, the "hummocks," with their wild, redundant vegetation, their entanglement of trees, bushes, and vines, their scent of flowers and song of birds; or the broad sunshine of the savanna, where they waded to the neck in grass; or the deep swamp, where, out of the black and root-encumbered slough, rise the huge buttressed trunks of the Southern cypress, the gray Spanish moss drooping from every bough and twig, wrapping its victims like a drapery of tattered cobwebs, and slowly draining away their life, for even plants devour each other, and play their silent parts in the universal tragedy of nature.

It nevertheless has occasional oases, with fine grazing lands about them, and the mountains, which are more broken and detached, have distinct marks of volcanic origin. The ranges though short, have generally the same parallel direction as those further east.

There might now have been a dozen similar places on the reef, so many oases in its desert, where soil had formed and grass was growing.

Bokharan troops aided the Russians, and Bokhara was rewarded with a generous slice of the conquered territory. Khiva was overthrown as quickly as the other oases had been, and the whole of Central Asia became Russian soil. It is true that a shadow of the old government is maintained, the khans of Bokhara and Khiva still occupying their thrones.

Beside their silvery-grey trunks you may see herds of the small but brightly-tinted oxen reposing; the ground is pied with daisies and buttercups, oleanders border the streamlets, and the plaintive notes of the djouak, the pastoral reed of the nomads, resound from some hidden copse. There will be nothing of this kind, I fear, in the carefully-tended oases of the Djerid.

The hours spent thus were as oases in her otherwise practical existence, and after a while she would return laden down with great bunches of ferns and wild flowers which, eventually, found a place on the walls of The Polka. Glancing at the bar to see that everything was to her satisfaction, the Girl greeted the boys warmly, almost rapturously with: "Hello, boys!

Yesterday I made the acquaintance of Haj Ibrahim, a Moorish merchant resident in Tripoli, but a native of Jerbah. When in Tripoli he acts as Consul for the Ghadamsee merchants; his brother is now in charge. Mustapha came with him direct from Tripoli, not passing through Mourzuk, but viâ the oases of Fezzan to the west.

And what are they, in a land like this? And the oases are undergoing another and more curious progression downwards. Strange to think that, while towns and villages rise higher every year, these gardens are slowly descending into the depths; they are already far below the circumambient desert, though not so deeply sunk as the verdant, crater-like depressions of some parts of Africa.