All this may sound very crude, but, as I have previously endeavored to show, whatever may be the rights and wrongs of the question, there is none of that sordid atmosphere associated with the same thing in Europe. About half-way between Bou Saada and Djelfa the mountains are left, and a broad expanse of plain, sparsely cultivated, takes the place of the alfa. In the distance a group of poplars appears, behind which lies a walled village. The car passes through a menacing gate and turns into a long, uninteresting street planted with sad trees. Of all the cities in North Africa Djelfa is the most lamentable. There is nothing to redeem its dull squalor, not even a possible climate. In winter it freezes; in summer the heat is unbearable; in the spring an icy blast blows from the mountains; in autumn it rains and snows. It would be the test of affection between a man and a woman to pass six months in this place and remain on speaking terms. If the traveler is wise he has lunched on the broad plain before reaching this wretched town, as, if not, he must suffer a meal in the very tumble-down hotel, which does its best, but which fails from want of support. Djelfa must be left as soon as possible. The car turns to the south, passes through another fortified gateway, and is soon speeding away on the straight white road which leads to the Sahara. More alfa, more bare hills, more broad horizons. At the fifteenth kilometer the _col des caravanes_, the highest point on the road, is reached, and, away, away, the road can be seen like a long ribbon unrolling itself toward the blue skies of the great south. The caravanserai of Aïn el Ibel, the Spring of the Camels, is the next landmark; once the nightly lodging in the days of the diligence, it is now only used as a place to drink coffee if one is frequenting the public car. The country is very lonely and desolate. It is a land of sheep-breeding, and, though the traveler coming straight from the green fields of Europe looks doubtfully at the gray scrub about him, he will have his doubts removed when he sees the great flocks feeding peacefully on either side of the road. Calm-faced nomads, tall of stature, watch over them, and in the distance a few black patches indicate where the camp has been temporarily pitched. Camels too are everywhere, and have replaced all forms of more modern transport. Caravans of these ungainly beasts, bearing bales of wool and alfa, with here and there the _bassours_ in which the women travel, plod slowly along. There is a sensation of something new in the atmosphere—the people of the north have been left far behind, and at every revolution of the wheels one seems to be speeding into the past. The flocks, the camels, the tents, the tall shepherds are the same as they were twelve hundred years ago, and even the rumbling motor-lorry which keeps the south supplied with sugar and coffee does not affect them.