The rest of our journey was less adventurous. At a caravanserai called Gelt Es Stel we were to send back the regimental brake and continue our road in a carriage sent by the Bach-Agha of Laghouat. We waited in vain for the promised vehicle, however, and when, on the second day, the mail and passenger coach came in, we decided it was better to continue our journey by that. The _coupé_--a small compartment for three in the front of the coach--was all that was available, so in we got--my husband, myself, three children, and four dogs! I shall never forget that journey. My legs were too long for the space, and the cramp at last grew unbearable, while the roof was so near my head that I had to sit perfectly still, with a swanlike curve of the neck which, though perhaps very graceful, was also excruciatingly uncomfortable. No one was more devoutly thankful than myself when at last we finally reached our destination. Laghouat, or, properly speaking, El-Aghouath, the “Pearl of the South,” as the Arabs call it, is built on and around two rocks rising out of the burning plain and cutting the oasis in two, thus giving it the form of a green horse-shoe. A small canalized stream passes between the two rocks, watering first the north and then the south oasis. [Illustration: THE TOWN OF LAGHOUAT, ON THE EDGE OF THE DESERT. _From a Photograph._] From the top of these rocks the view, to the lover of Sahara beauty, is magnificent. Away to the south stretches the desert, sterile and naked, save for the tufts of vegetation here and there, yet the lights and shades of colour are so variable and rich that it is a pure joy to gaze over its infinity. On the north the undulating flatness is relieved by a low line of rocky barren hills, round the top of which is a curious dark line, which one could swear was a high-water mark. On a hot summer day these hills rise black as coal out of the flame of golden sand around them; then, as evening draws nigh, some become pale rose-colour, others deepest pansy purple, or bright ochre yellow, and all so vivid, so luminous, that the artist despairs of transferring their colours to his canvas. Nearly all the houses at Laghouat are built of mud bricks, mixed with straw and baked in the sun. As a child I used to be very much perplexed by the Israelites’ complaint during their Egyptian captivity, “How can we make bricks, for we have no more straw?” No one could explain the matter to me satisfactorily, but now I understood. In these parts, when the earth is not sand, it is clay. This clay is well wetted and patted, in the way dear to the childish heart, and then mixed and rolled in very short straw. Afterwards it is put in a square wooden frame, well patted once more, turned out in rows, and left to bake in the sun for a fortnight. The bricks are then stacked up ready for use.