The next morning was beautiful; and turning to the eastward, we proceeded on our journey, expecting early in the day to reach sheik Tibi’s own Douar. We came upon patches or outliers of the cork forests. In ten miles I counted sixteen Douars, averaging seventy tents; and the furthest from us on each side was not more than two miles. Thence for fifteen miles, though the land was cultivated, there was neither tent nor tree to be seen. The soil, almost sand, is thinly spread over a face of rock. The festouks and asphodels had disappeared, and lilies supplied their place; but not a fly, nor a bird, nor a spider, nor insect, save ants. The hollows were marshes or little lakes; but nowhere was the mould shaped by the action of water,--nowhere did the soil imbibe the rain to hold and discharge it,--no trace of a rivulet. This tract extends along the whole coast, averaging twenty miles in width and five hundred feet in height. Schist, slate, and quartz-rock protrude through it in some places, the line of bearing being at right angles to the coast. I have already explained this formation, the peculiarity of which consists in the surface being converted into stone. At one place the road crossed what looked like a rivulet; but the extent of its course was 250 yards, that is to say, this was the whole distance from the first indenting of the ground till it had opened into a deep chasm. Wherever water filters through, the sand is removed and the rock falls in; and then the rent goes on like a crack in a plate of glass, widening and deepening to the sea.