Wausau pilot. [volume] (Wausau, Wis.) 1896-1940, 1914-04-14


of desert silver pale and shining as If encrusted
with gems A little wind came up from the south
blowing the fine white sand into my face
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 belated blossoms of fragile pink. 1t
is thus almost dramatically that one enters the
desert from the stony alfa-srewn ways of the high
plateaus. No longer needed now were the fur
coats and foot-warmers that had been so neces-
sary at the hour of our early departure from Con-
stantine. We seemed to have passed suddenly
into subtropcal land quivering 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 a fresh
impetus to the loaing 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 lattering an aspect
and it has made him conceited and selfco1scious
But he is really no worse at Biskra than he Is IN
Tunis. Immense and luxurious hotels have sprung
up to supersede the simpler caravanserais of for
mer days. when the little town was favorite but
quite questionable resort of French people in
Search of simplicity and sunshine But am in
clined to think that Biskra is unspoilable. 1.-THE
Heart of the Desert as the Arabs afectionately
call her she was 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.
1.-TWO things are necessary" says Stevenson I'm
any neighborhood where propose to spend
life-a desert and running water" Biskra 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 splendor of the desert with its paor
as of a calm sea family touched with blue haze.
The moonlight-colored city with its blanched
streets lies surrounded by a fringe of perpetual
verdure. Watch the dawn waking irishued in the
eastern sky, painting the Aures mountains to
deeper rose and drawing a filmy amber veil across
the sands, and think you will agree with me
that Biskra is unspoilable.
There are many simple sights that cannot fail
to interest the unaecustomed visitor from the
North, on account of their novelty. The Arab
school with the brighteyed, inattentive little tur-
baned or befeZZed scholars, listlessly reciting
verses from the Koran, under the aegis of the
tolba or schoolmaster; 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
hacks: the caravans arriving almost daily from
the south with their loads of dates; the swaying
palanquins within which the women travel on the
camels backs, hidden and mysterious; the fine
garden of Count Landon with its lovely tropical
trees and flowers; the village of Old Bckra, with
its elay-buit huts swarming with dark-eyed chill
dren-these are but q few of the picturesque,
quaint or beautiful things that Biskra offers to the
visitor The nomad camps. too, are source of
interest with their tents of camelhGir cloth,
guarded often by white Kabyle dog. The nomad