244 EXTRACTS FROM 



the north of Germany, is very much mistaken ; for it is always 

 undulating, often deeply intersected by valleys and crowned 

 by hills. But it is always lonely, without the smallest vestige 

 of plant life, and inhabited on its outskirts only by most 

 peculiar animal forms specially adapted to it. 



Still, to the traveller the desert seems grand and beautiful 

 a type of eternal rest : lovely, too, in tone, glowing under the 

 scorching African sun, and tinted by stones of varied hues 

 bright yellow, dark, and sometimes even mottled which form 

 singular and charming combinations of colour. 



No living thing did we see as the train rattled through the 

 wilderness, except some Bedouins with white burnouses and 

 long guns, who appeared from behind a hillock. Pure 

 Berbers live in this part of the desert free sons of the 

 soil, brave, predatory, utterly unrestrained and lawless, and in 

 their way the happiest of men. The various tribes differ much 

 in appearance and costume, as well as in their weapons and 

 their individual characteristics. Still Egypt, so far as the 

 beauty and picturesqueness of its free races is concerned, is 

 very inferior to Morocco on the one hand and Asia on the 

 other ; for the south-western part of that quarter of the globe 

 is also inhabited by Semitic Arabs. 



Towards noon cultivation again appeared, in the form of a 

 moist green spot in the midst of the yellow waste. This was 

 the great oasis of El-Fay um, a thoroughly well-tilled circular 

 patch of land, surrounded on all sides by the desert, the large 

 lake of Birket-el-Karun forming its boundary on the west and 

 separating the arable ground from the waste. Before arriving 

 at the station of Abouksor we passed through a small portion 

 of this oasis, which was well-farmed, fruitful, and chiefly planted 

 with sugar-cane. We had now reached the terminus of the 

 line, where a dilapidated station and a few buildings belonging 

 to it, together with a sugar factory, form a little colony. The 

 reader must not suppose that this is an establishment on the 



