When Nature planned the Foum-es-Sahara she was in a dramatic mood; a more fitting, a more impressive, or a more romantic gateway to the desert could scarcely be imagined. The gorge itself is so narrow that there is barely room for the road and the railway above and for the river beneath. Its perpendicular walls of red and yellow rock have been carved by wind-blown sand into the most curious and fantastic shapes—spires, pinnacles, gargoyles, flying-buttresses—one great monolith which rises abruptly from the flank of the Aurés bearing a striking resemblance to a medieval castle, with towers, battlements, and keep. But the most impressive view of the Foum-es-Sahara is to be had at nightfall, when that face of the Aurés which rises precipitously from the desert is transformed by the westering sun into a rampart of ruddy coral in the center of which yawns a mysterious purple aperture—the mouth of the pass itself. A caravan entering it seems to be swallowed up by the earth. [Illustration: A SAHARAN MARKET-PLACE The _souks_ of the towns along the desert’s fringe are cross-sections of North African life, for to them come buyers of horses, camels, wool, and leather from the cities of the littoral, and caravans laden with the strange products of the Sudan and the Congo, of Lake Tchad and Timbuktu] We lunched at Batna, a thoroughly Europeanized little town of low buildings and wide streets, which holds little of either interest or amusement. Commanding the pass at El Kantara, through which from time immemorial the desert tribes have invaded the settled regions of the Tell, it is a place of great strategic importance and has a large garrison, housed in _casernes_ which are the most conspicuous buildings in the town. Batna is of interest to the tourist only because it is there that he turns sharply to the eastward on the ancient military road which leads to Lambessa, Timgad, Tebessa, and the other garrison towns which marked the line of Rome’s southern frontier. Set on the slopes of the Aurés, three thousand feet above the sea, Timgad may be reached by motor-car from Batna, some thirty miles away, within the hour, the road passing within sight of the ruins of Lambessa. In Roman times Lambessa was an important military outpost, the headquarters of the Third Augustan Legion; but, with the exception of the Prætorium, a massive foursquare building which rises in lonely dignity from amid the crumbled masonry and toppled columns of what was once the Forum, its ruins are scarcely worth the prolonged attention of any one who is not an archæologist, particularly as such picturesqueness as they possess is marred by the proximity of a huge military prison.