354 DKSERT SANDS 



always utterly misconceived in Europe. Most people at 

 home picture the doeert to themselves as wholly doatl, flat, 

 and sandy. To talk about the fauna and flora of Sahara 

 sounds in their ears like self-contradictory nonsense. But, 

 as a matter of fact, that uniform and lifeless desert of the 

 popular fancy exists only in those sister arts that George 

 II. — good, practical man—so heartily despised, ' boetry and 

 bainting.' The desert of real life, though less impressive, 

 is far more varied. It has its ups and downs, its hills and 

 valleys. It has its sandy plains and its rocky ridges. It 

 has its lakes and ponds, and even its rivers. It has its 

 plants and animals, its oases and palm-groves. In short, 

 like everything else on earth, it's a good deal more complex 

 than people imagine. 



One may take Sahara as a very good example of the 

 actual desert of physical geography, in contradistinction to 

 the level and lifeless desert that stretches like the sea over 

 illimitable spaces in verso or canvas. And here, I fear, I 

 am going to dispel another common and cherished illusion. 

 It is my fate to be an iconoclast, and perhaps long practice 

 has made me rather like the trade than otherwise. A 

 popular belief exists all over Europe that the late M. 

 Roudaire —that De Lesseps who never quite * came off ' — 

 proposed to cut a canal from the Mediterranean into the 

 heart of Africa, which was intended, in the stereotyped 

 phrase of journalism, to ' flood Sahara,' and convert the 

 desert into an inland sea. He might almost as well have 

 talked of cutting a canal from Brighton to the Devil's 

 Dyke and * submerging England,' as the devil wished to 

 do in the old legend. As a matter of fact, good, practical 

 M. Roudaire, sound engineer that he was, never even 

 dreamt of anything so chimerical. What he did really 

 propose was something far milder and simpler in its way, 

 but, as his scheme has given rise to the absurd notion thai 



