Among the inhabitants of the Desert I would include the possessors of the great Egyptian oasis,--that ancient cradle of civilization--that strange and mysterious land which, after throbbing with so full and brilliant a life in the days of the Pharaohs and the Ptolemies, slumbered for centuries under the leaden domination of the Moslem. Let us note only that the Egyptian people have undergone no special modification; the features of the fellahs of to-day are exactly those which we trace in the pictures that cover the walls of palace and tomb, the monuments that carry us back in imagination to the erection of the Pyramids or the glories of hundred-gated Thebes. It is the old Egypto-Berber race, wherein we recognize the mixture of the black and Shemitic blood, or perhaps the still incomplete result of the influences which have transformed into negroes the whites who emigrated, some thousands of years ago, from Western Asia into Africa. [Illustration: NUBIAN WOMEN.] The Egyptians establish, very clearly, the transition between the Shemites and the population of Nubia and Ethiopia. With the latter the skin is black or of a deep bronze; but the form, the features, the hair, approach much more nearly the Caucasian than the Negro type. The Nubian women especially exhibit a grace and dignity of movement which reveal the nobleness of their origin. "It is in these far lands," says Trémaux, "we meet with the modern Rebecca, attired with the antique Biblical simplicity, and carrying the water vessel on her head. Their air, at once easy and reserved, their black modest eyes, recall those images of the holy history which every one has seen; only, instead of a cotton stuff gaily coloured, imagine a piece very dirty and often in tatters, and you will have the portrait of the Nubian woman; this garment is otherwise so naturally draped and so proudly worn, that it yields in nothing to the ancient models." [Illustration] [Illustration] BOOK III. _PRAIRIES, SAVANNAHS, PAMPAS, AND LLANOS._ CHAPTER I. THE WILD PLAINS OF THE OLD WORLD:--THE AFRICAN INTERIOR. When we have crossed the 18th parallel (or nearly so) of north latitude in Africa and the 30th in Asia--the southern boundary of the Rainless District--countries of extreme fertility and exuberant product succeed to the dreary solitudes we have hitherto traversed. At intervals, indeed, the traveller encounters some vast blighted and accursed area, where, for a part of each year, a deadly aridity prevails; but ever there comes a happy moment, even in these desolate wastes, when genial Nature resumes her rights, abundant rains nourish vegetable and animal life, and the glowing scene constrains us to exclaim with thankful heart, "The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof."