Sequachee Valley news. (Sequachee [Sequatchie], Tenn.) 1896-1952, 1914-05-28

umltaDle white expanse
OF desert silver pale and shining if encrusted
with gems. little wind came up from the south
blowing the fine white sand into my face re-
minding me of the desolate solitudes that lay be-
yond, the endless empty sands dipping far south
ward Groves of date palms grew close to the
river bank, and hedges of wild oleander still
showed few beated blossoms of fragile pink. 1t
is thus almost dramatically that one enters the
desert from the stony alfa-strewn ways of the high
piateaus. No longer needed the fur
coats and footwarmers that had been neces-
sary at the hour of our early departure from Con
stantne. We seemed to have passed suddenly
into a sub-tropical land quvering in the burning
sunlight.
1t is the fashion to say of Biskra that she has
been spoilt since The Garden of Allah awakened
the world to her hidden beauty, made her popular
to the hordes of Cooks tourists and gave fresh
impetus to the loafng profession of guide, which
the Arab is always only too ready to adopt He
Is, indeed somewhat more of pest than he used
to be; he knows that he has been written about
and perhaps presented in too 1atterng aspect,
and it has made him conceited and self-conscious.
But he Is really no worse at Biskra than he is III
Tuns. Immense and luxurious hotels have sprung
up to supersede the simpler caravanserais of for
days, when the little town favorite but
quite questionable resort Of French people IN
search of simplicity and sunshine. But am in
ciined to think that Biskra is unspoilabe. "The
Heart of the Desert the Arabs affectionately
call her she the AID Piscinam of the Romans,
and the famous Third Legion sojourned in that
wonderful and fertile oasis which now be
reached on the fifth day after leaving London
Two things are necessary" says Stevenson, Tin
any neghborhood where we propose to spend
life--a desert and running water Blskra pos
sesses these essentials in abundance, and she has
the additional advantage of constant, almost per
petual, sunshine. Her palm and olive and orange
groves are watered by springs that have never
failed. Close to her-so close indeed, that she
almost seems to mock at its parched infertility-
lies the white spendor of the desert with its pallor
as of a calm sea family touched with blue haze.
The moonlghtcolored city with its blanched
streets lies surrounded by a fringe of perpetual
verdure. Watch the dawn waking iris-hued in the
eastern sky painting the Aures mountains to a
deeper rose and drawing flmy amber veil across
the sands, and l think you will agree with me
that Biskra is unspoilable
There are many simple sights that cannot fail
to interest the unaccustomed visitor from the
North, on account of their novelty. The Arab
school, with the bright-eyed, inattentive little tur
baned befezZed scholars, listessly reciting
verses from the Koran. under the aegis of the
tolba, or schoomaster; the market-place TEEN
ing with native vendors, story-tellers and sand
OWNERS the groups of picturesque Arabs
wrapped in their white burnouses or shabby gray
haicks; the caravans arriving almost daily from
the south with their loads of dates; the swaying
palanquins within which the women travel on the
carlels' backs, hidden and mysterious; the fine
garden Of Count Landon, with its lovely tropical
trees and flowers; the village of Old Bickra with
its clay-built huts swarming with darkeyed chill
dren-these are but few of the picturesque
quaint beautiful things that Biskra offers to the
visitor. The nomad camps, too. are source OF
interest with their tents of camelhair cloth,
guarded often by a white Kabyle dog The nomad