It was nearly three weeks before we reached the enemy's country. We had meanwhile met with the usual adventures incident to these regions. We had set fire to the forests of the Little Atlas Mountains, and been obliged to raise our camp, and fly in terror from the conflagration. We had crossed the dreary solitudes of Goor and Shott, through which our daily march had been enlivened by songs, or beguiled by listening to the wild legends of our Arab guides; and night after night we had encamped, like the vagabond tribes of Sahara, either round the mouths of wells, or without water in the open plains, each man receiving a scanty supply from the barrels, while the beasts were left to bear their thirst as they could. But now, after passing the basins of the Shott, and gaining the slight elevation beyond, we entered on a tract of desert as yet untrodden by European feet, and met with trials of a nature the least of all expected. The wide wastes which lay before us appeared uniform and level as far as the eye could reach, but somewhat diversified by verdant patches of halfa (coarse grass of the desert), and by deceitful appearances of sheets of water, produced by the reflection of the light in the undulating vapours rising from the burning sand. In the distance, something like blue waves appeared: it was part of the great Atlas chain; but close at hand, to our right, was a long line of dunes. These eminences, smooth and sterile as marble domes, were apparently as solid too; but we knew that, if the desert wind should blow, they would be shaken into moving clouds of sand, overwhelming all before them. Our column proceeded in silence. The soft sand yielded no echo to the tread. Every one appeared thoughtful and abstracted. This place has terrors even for the Arabs; they tell a thousand stories of the Pass of Sidi-Mohammed-el-Aoori: it was there, in times remote, that great armies were overpowered and slain by hostile bands, or destroyed by the scarcely less merciless elements; there many travellers have disappeared in the storm, or fallen under the hand of the murderer. It is the 'gate' of the desert; and the tutelar genii have placed the terrific dunes as a hieroglyphic warning to those who rashly approach. They seem to say, 'here begins the empire of Sterility and Death; enter if thou darest!' Doubtless the Arab tales had some influence on our minds, increasing the well-grounded fears inspired by the natural features of these arid wastes. Several of us mentally repeated that melancholy line from Dante-- Lasciate ogni speranza voi che entrate;[2] and not a few pictured to themselves a body of troops visiting these sands half a century later, and finding the bones of Cavaignac's army scattered here and there over the plains.