Produced by Clarity and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) Transcriber’s Note: Part I lacks a Chapter X. THE SAHARA [Illustration: “A STREET SCENE.” _From the Painting by A. Lamplough._] THE SAHARA BY PIERRE LOTI TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY MARJORIE LAURIE [Illustration] NEW YORK BRENTANO’S MCMXXI PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY THE DUNEDIN PRESS LIMITED, EDINBURGH CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 9 PART I. 20 II. 75 III. 161 INTRODUCTION I In your voyage down the west coast of Africa, after passing the southern extremity of Morocco, you sail for days and nights together past the shores of a never-ending land of desolation. It is the Sahara, “the great sea without water,” to which the Moors have given also the name of “Bled-el-Ateuch,” the land of thirst. These desert shores stretch for five hundred leagues without one port of call for the passing vessel, without one blade of grass, one sign of life. Solitude succeeds solitude with mournful monotony; shifting sandhills, vague horizons—and the heat grows each day more intense. At last there comes in sight over the sands an old city, white, with yellow palm trees set here and there—it is St Louis on the Senegal, the capital of Senegambia. A church, a mosque, a tower, houses built in Moorish style—the whole seems asleep under the burning sun, like those Portuguese towns, St Paul and St Philip of Benguela, that once flourished on the banks of the Congo. As one draws nearer one sees with surprise that this town is not built on the shore, that it has not even a port, nor any direct means of communication with the outer world. The flat, unbroken coast line is as inhospitable as that of the Sahara, and a ridge of breakers forever prevents the approach of ships. Another feature, not visible from a distance, now presents itself in the vast human ant heaps on the shore, thousands and thousands of thatched huts, lilliputian dwellings with pointed roofs, and teeming with a grotesque population of negroes. These are the two large Yolof towns, Guet n’dar and N’dar-toute, which lie between St Louis and the sea.