Biskra is soon to lose its present distinction as the end of the railway line. The rails are being rapidly laid towards Touggourt, 212 kilometres to the south, a desert town where splendid gardens flourish beneath the shade of 200,000 palm trees. The irrepressible motor-car has already stirred its dust. The prudent Michelin guide describes the road thither as _piste carrossable mais imprudente à suivre par mauvais temps_. You are advised to take mats to lay down in the softer places for the car to run over. But what happens in the event of a serious breakdown is not explained. When the rail is finished the enterprising tourist may pass by Biskra as a mere wayside station and continue to the end. But he may be only going farther to fare worse. It does not appear that the distant towns of the Sahara present any special points of interest beyond their existence. Yet perhaps there are some to whom the desert calls as to others the veldt. But they will stick to their camels and their mules, and merely use the railway extension as a jumping-board for further explorations. [Illustration: BISKRA: STATUE OF CARDINAL LAVIGERIE] To him who strives to peer beneath the obvious surface nothing in Biskra is more significant than the statue of Cardinal Lavigerie. It stands in the main street close to the luxurious Royal Hotel, hard by the quarter of the Arab cafés and the street of the Ouled-Naïl dancing-girls, a symbol of the eternal amidst the evanescent, a protest for God against the Devil and the world. And it looks south. Thousands of miles away, across the vast expanse of the continent, another statue looks north. Rhodes and Lavigerie, two types of our civilization, further apart in intention and in ideals of human conduct than are their statues, look forth over Africa from their separate standpoints, the Africa for which each spent his strength. Both worked to bring to the Dark Continent the accumulated wealth of light to which Europe is heir; they drew perhaps on different departments in the great storehouse; they directed the illumination to different points; but to evolve order from chaos, to substitute freedom for tyranny, to impose peace even, if need were, by the sword,—these were the objects which both pursued.