i8o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



self of its expansive comfort. His animals are destined to fare less 

 pleasantly, inasmucli as they are generally left to dry their bodies 

 in the open sun, with a temperature beating over their heads of 

 possibly not less than 130° to 140° F. This habit of denying to 

 the animals what little comfort was to be had was a trait painfully 

 apparent in our driver, but it could be said in his behalf that he 

 differed in this respect little from other members of his tribe. 

 What special object he had in allowing his jaded horses to wilt under 

 a burning sun, when a few feet approach would have brought them 

 a generous temperature thirty degrees lower, could not be ascer- 

 tained. 



Saada, whose position on a bank slightly elevated above the 

 Djedi saved it from the recent overflows, is one, sufficiently typical 



Ml i: Wagon Plowing through Sahara Mud. 



in itself, of a series of caravansaries which are scattered at intervals 

 through the northern Sahara. A large quadrangular space, in- 

 tended to accommodate a goodly assemblage of men and animals, is 

 surrounded by a stoutly built wall of masonry, the inner side of 

 which is variously subdivided into rooms and stalls, yielding clean 

 shelter joined to a refreshing shade. Entrance is by a single gate, 

 closure of which means the guarantee of safety to those in the in- 

 terior. The whole is under the military administration of a handful 

 of leisure-loving Arabs, who look to the wants of the traveling- 

 caravans, and presumably as much to their safety as to their com- 

 fort. Long before reaching Saada the effects of the late storm had 

 made themselves disagreeably apparent. The road, or what there 

 was to represent it, was washed into gullies by the recent overflow, 



