Now and then as we advanced we met troops of camels with their owners going north ward to the Tell, or cultivated lands, carrying with them their wives and other goods and chattels. Or, again, we would come upon the huge bleached carcass of one of those all-important beasts of burden, which had fallen on one of its weary journeys and left its bones to whiten upon the sand. Or we would see in the distance a hyena or jackal prowling about in search of more recent dead. Everything was so novel and strange to us that for a long time pleasure and excitement prevented our yielding to, or even feeling, fatigue. As, however, the day advanced and the heat became more and more intolerable, as the glare blinded us and the dust half smothered us, again our spirits sank and the pleasure of "this event in life" assumed a doubtful hue. Even when the spirit is willing the flesh is weak, and we were beginning to feel thoroughly worn out when the diligence pulled up on the top of the range of hills which divides the Little Desert from the Sahara proper. At last we beheld it--the Great Desert! "The sea! how like the sea!" we all exclaimed; and indeed there it lay like a vast expanse of calm ocean. The slopes of the hills upon which we stood appeared like the shore, and those distant black-gray spots surrounded by a seeming blue, so wonderfully like islands in the ocean, were the oases of the Ziban, encircled by the great sea of sand, the desert. It is a view never to be forgotten--such light! such color! such calm loveliness! Fatigue, discomfort, difficulties, all alike were forgotten; self seemed lost in the magic of the scene; and it was with straining eyes and beating hearts that we rattled down the declivity to Biskra, the largest, richest and most important of this group of oases. But here again our troubles commenced. This journey seemed fated to be, like the journey of life itself, a series of ups and downs, calculated to fully exercise all our strength and philosophy. It was no joke to find ourselves in the desert, after a drive of fifteen hours, without a resting-place for our wearied bodies or a dinner to restore our failing strength and spirits. One hotel, we found, was indeed shut up, and in the other they had only two close, wretched-looking rooms to offer us--one with two, and one with three, beds. We were very reluctant to accept these; and, after all, how could seven persons, a lady and six gentlemen, be thus accommodated? Mr. M---- and I determined to lay siege to the closed hotel and try if we could not find an "open sesame" to unclose its portals. [Illustration: BISKRA.]