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MYRIADS OF GRAVE-LIKE MOUNDS
is scattered over this vast waste place of Africa which has an area of 3,500,000 square miles—an area almost as great as that of the entire continent of Europe. From the little we have seen of this accursed region—this useless quarter of our globe—we can gain no conception of its vastness. But we cannot fail to be impressed with the unearthly silence of the sandy valleys through which we pass as we return toward Touggourt; or oppressed by the thought that beyond the nearest hills are other hills ad infinitum, hills so like that we might lose ourselves by merely wandering a hundred yards from the well-marked camel trail; that beyond those other hills are plains of sand and sage-brush, more piles of drifted sand, vast stretches of pebbly, gravelly soil, mountains of barren rock,—some of them rising eight thousand feet above the level of the sea,—and plains more barren still, sunk below the ocean's level—unmeasured miles of shifting sands—baked by the rays of a merciless, brazen sun, or tormented
