ASPECTS OF NATURE IN THE SAHARA. 



75 



j^vassaland, the region traversed by the talented divine, is repre- 

 sented to be not Africa, but itself. And yet in another part of great 

 Africa a more recent traveler, Mr. James Johnston, the author of a 

 remarkable work entitled Eeality versus Romance in South Central 

 Africa, assures his readers that he " traveled four thousand five hun- 

 dred miles, mostly on foot, and alone so far as a white companion 

 is concerned, passing through numerous hostile and savage tribes, 

 traversing areas hitherto reported too pestilential for exploration, 

 surmounting natural objects which have been represented as insur- 

 mountable, and penetrating regions where no white man had ever 

 gone before," and during this performance he never once found 



A (jAKAVAiN (JiN IIS MaUCU. 



hiiuself prompted to fire a shot in anger, nor was he compelled to do 

 so in self-defense against a human enemy. 



With a feeling that my words will carry little weight with those 

 who think otherwise, I venture to suggest that the Sahara is not 

 exactly what it is commonly assumed to be; and yet in many ways 

 it is not very different. Its first sands, when approached from the 

 side of El-Kantara, are giant rocks, burned brown and red under the 

 glow of the southern sun, standing out in wild pinnacles from the 

 gently undulating surface. This is not the desert that is ordinarily 

 pictured by the mind— that flat, endless expanse which fades off un- 

 moved and unbroken to the limits of vision — but it is the desert, 

 nevertheless, just as much as the mountain snows of the far ISTorth 



