THE END OF THE JOURNEY 293 



hillocks, with slabs of shale that made the camels stumble 

 more than ever; but the end came with unexpected 

 rapidity, for, after the guide had told us under a noon 

 sun that it was a long day's march to Jaghabub, Yusuf 

 spied the white qubba of the zawia from a friendly gherd. 

 In a few minutes the whole round M^adi spread before us, 

 with its strips of scattered palms and brushwood, and 

 beyond a line of square sandstone cliffs the white walls 

 of Jaghabub that looked so near and that took us more 

 than two hours to reach. 



The home of Sidi Ben Ali is by far the most pic- 

 turesque of the Senussi oases, for it is blinding white in 

 the sunshine — a smooth, polished cupola and tall madna, 

 with the open-arched gallery of Sidi Idris's house rising 

 above the massive, fortress-like walls of the zawia, all 

 white — white as the windmills that look like marble 

 pillars in the distance or the pale sand brick of the few 

 big houses that surround the zawia. Jaghabub is not a 

 town in the proper sense of the word. It is one immense 

 building with thick, windowless walls, surrounding a 

 maze of courts, passages, schools, lodgings for students, 

 the big houses of the Senussi family and the large mosque 

 and qubba of Sidi Ben Ali. It stands on a cliff from 

 which flights of steps lead down to palm gardens and the 

 one big well that supplies water to the whole settlement. 

 Outside the massed, many-storied buildings of the zawia 

 are a few scattered houses, but Jaghabub is a university 

 pure and simple. When Sidi el Mahdi removed his head- 

 quarters to Kufara he freed half a hundred slaves, giving 

 them the gardens that they cultivated and ordering that 

 their rights should be respected by his successors; so now 

 there is a colony of these liberated blacks who live among 

 the palms in the wadi. They work hard in their vegetable 

 gardens, which are irrigated by an excellent system of 

 channels and reservoirs dependent on the spring below 



