It is a little difficult to analyse the charm of Biskra. The charm is great and the attraction strong. They do not lie altogether in the brilliance of its sunshine, in the shade of its palms, in the richness of its colouring, in the exuberance of its life. These things we may meet elsewhere. Biskra has other qualities; it is barbaric, African to the core, tropical in its intensity. Biskra is barbaric. To one entering by rail or road its trim streets and squares, and housing himself in a hostelry which might be anywhere within the bounds of the civilized world, this is a hard saying. Yet he may soon perceive that its veneer is very thin and understand that it is very transitory. A hot wind from the desert in April, and it is gone, and the real Biskra will reassert itself. But even during the months of the incursion of the _hiverneurs_, the barbaric note is never absent; to the ear that listens it is predominant; it rings more shrill by force of contrast. The troops of snarling camels, with their loads from the Great Beyond, the clash of African musicless music, the thronging crowds of jostling races in its markets, the hooded figures crouched motionless round its cafés, the bedizened native harlotry which stalks unashamed,— nay, proudly as mistress of the town,—in its streets; all are there to mark its essential savagery. A few hours ago in the upper lands behind the desert gateway we breathed the chill atmosphere of Europe; at Biskra we have passed the bounds; sun and sky and earth and man and outrageous woman combine to tell us that at last we have entered Africa. It may be that therein lies Biskra’s attraction to the jaded European. It is all a little unnatural from the European point of view. There is a sense of walking on the slopes of a volcano, or of playing with fire; and if we may believe our novelists, European nature under its influence tends to eccentric and eruptive manifestations. Yet its frequenters exhibit little outward sign of disturbance. German tourists, arrayed indeed as if about to combat a Touareg onslaught, yet read novels peacefully in the pleasant seclusion of the hotel garden; the Kodak fiend stalks his prey; the traffic in post cards goes merrily along; but we cannot escape an uneasy feeling that this nonchalance is a cloak. Perhaps the novelists have got on our nerves.