In that prospect there is, surely, a sentiment of the temperament of the sea, in likeness of boundless, unchanging, unconquerable leagues. But the sea swings and curls and breaks in foam, and is alive; whereas the sands of the desert lie ever expressionless and dead. So that, if we accept that in majestic space the sea and the desert are the same, we still have to admit that the lassitude of the desert multiplies the seeds of desolation to such an extent that, almost tangibly, certainly sentiently, it enlarges its empty vastness. Wherefore I am confident that it is in all such intriguing influences that we find the very essence of the desert’s desolation and magnitude of space. That it has a very real vastness that intimidates is borne out, in our everyday life, by the accounts of tourists who have travelled in Algeria, or elsewhere, and who have been a few days south of, say, Biskra by camel, and who return to recount how they have seen the Sahara. How many such tourists have stood on this mere threshold of a mighty sandscape, beneath the Aurès Mountains, and conjectured on the immensity of the Great South Road that points the way to the heart and the mystery of another world, unyieldingly remote, and not as theirs. And what happens then? Why is it that we do not have record that some of those tourists have got down from this doorstep of Biskra and set out into the Great Desert? If it was a fair land that lay before them most surely they would flock upon the way. But it is not so, and no foot makes the move. They have viewed an awe-inspiring immensity that casts a deadly spell of dread. And, one by one, year by year, they are repelled and go their way; _back through the friendly mountains_. After all, this is far from astonishing of strangers, for they but express something of the deep-rooted, superstitious dread of the desert which is found in the soul of every native who lives anywhere within reach of its borders, or in its interior. Furthermore, it may be well to remember that the Sahara is a land of great antiquity, that takes one to realms of Biblical times. Steeped in the religion of Islam, it knows little perceptible change to-day, and is not on a plane with the modern world. Wherefore, even if we only set our minds back in keeping with a not very distant period of the past, it is not difficult thus to find another simile to the sea in picturing that it was only a little more than four centuries ago that the Atlantic Ocean probably held a similar dread of immensity before Columbus discovered America. [Illustration: A NOOK IN THE MOUNTAINLAND OF AÏR]