82 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES 



All these are growths of the bottom lands, the 

 hollows among the sand dunes back of the town. 

 Within some of these are little fresh ponds in 

 which grow waterlilies and the usual aquatic 

 plants of such places. Here amid the prevailing 

 wildness are many little beauty spots which, 

 could the Pilgrims have come to them before the 

 winter frosts had wrecked the vegetation, might 

 have tempted them to stay. Passing on down 

 the Cape you soon leave these behind and get 

 into the higher dunes on the narrowest part where 

 vegetation has little chance for its life. Here for a 

 mile or two one might well think himself in Sa- 

 hara. The sands, blown hither and thither and 

 piled in fantastic shapes by the winds, are as 

 clean as those of the beaten sea beach, as free 

 from all suspicion of humus. 



Yet if you will cross Sahara in most any direc- 

 tion to the camel's-hump hills which are scat- 

 tered over its border as if a caravan had become 

 petrified there, you will find the humps sprouting 

 vegetation, a vegetation that is sparse, perhaps, 

 but to your astonishment is glossy and luxuriant 

 of leaf. More than one of these mounds rep- 



