Page:The Burton Holmes lectures; (IA burtonholmeslect04holm).pdf/180

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be obtained at this season. But there is, they tell us, a quicker way. Every third morning the desert-mail leaves Biskra in a two-seated, three-horse wagon, a sort of desert diligence, which, thanks to eight relays of horses, accomplishes the journey in two long days of sixteen hours each.

STREETS AND STRUCTURES OF THE SAME MATERIAL

FEATHER DUSTERS IN A DUSTY LAND

To be sure, a wagon journey in the desert does not appeal to us,—it seems so shockingly prosaic. But a glimpse of one of the streets of native Biskra, so strangely beautiful, intensifies our interest in that other oasis—so far away—which must be even more strange, more African than anything in Biskra. And we resolve to go down deeper in the desert—to cross the sands in a four-wheeled ship. We make arrangements