We appealed to our host, who led us into his library and on the table spread a large-scale map labeled “Afrique du Nord Française.” There they lay before me, tempting as jewels, those glowing lands of sun and sand, of Arab, Berber, and Moor, of mosque and minaret. Set in the Mediterranean shore-line like great fragments of colored mosaic were the Barbary States—Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco. Below them, sweeping southward to the Great Bend of the Niger and the swamps around Lake Tchad, was the yellow expanse of the Sahara, crisscrossed with the thin black lines which I knew for caravan-routes and sprinkled with the patches of green which stand for palm-shaded oases. And far to the westward, where Africa almost rubs shoulders with South America, lay Mauretania, land of the Blue-Veiled Silent Ones, The Forgotten of God. Now I maintain that it is as unfair to unroll a map before a man who is striving to overcome the wander-thirst as it is to offer cocaine to a reformed drug-addict. For how, I ask you, could one be expected to resist the lure of those magic names—Kairouan, Gafsa, Touggourt, Ghardaia, Laghouat, Sidi-bel-Abbès, Oujda, Fez, Mequinez, Mazagan, Mogador, Agadir? At sight of them my resolutions crumbled like Mexican adobe. Almost before I realized it my carefully made plans had been tossed into the discard, and instead of poring over plans and specifications with an architect I was overhauling my travel-gear and ordering riding-breeches from my tailor and making inquiries about the sailing-dates from Marseilles. Yes, it was the map that was my undoing, for I never see a map but I’m away On all the errands that I long to do, Up all the rivers that are painted blue, And all the ranges that are painted gray, And into those pale spaces where they say, “Unknown”.... There are three routes from France to French North Africa, and they are all served by the steamers of the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique, or, as it is better known to Americans, the French Line. The first is from Bordeaux to Casablanca, the chief seaport of Morocco; a four-day voyage, this, half of it in the Bay of Biscay. Speaking for myself, I have never found that ill-reputed body of water anything save smooth, but doubtless that has been my good fortune. The second route is from Marseilles to Algiers by the Mediterranean greyhounds, swift, luxurious vessels which make the crossing in something under four-and-twenty hours, so that you have scarcely said good-by to Europe before you are being greeted by Africa. The third route, and the one which we took, is from Marseilles to Tunis—a two days’ voyage if the steamer is not detained at Bizerta.