MORE WANDERINGS AND WORK 233 



far more reasonable than any other I had seen, calling 

 upon great elevation and all kinds of cataclysms to ex- 

 plain what seems to me a most simple thing. The whole 

 phenomenon is very much like that which has caused 

 our Great Salt Lake Basin and the Sinks of Nevada and 

 Idaho and Utah and that part of the West. 



I have been greatly interested in the few days I have 

 spent here and they have fully repaid me, and I dare 

 say if I don't see much I shall at any rate get an excel- 

 lent idea of the physical geography of Northern Africa, 

 which is certainly very different from that of any other 

 region I have seen. The oasis here is an interesting 

 one, and the life of the Arabs on the desert in their 

 tents and with their herds of camels and of goats and 

 sheep is much like what I saw on the Nile, only here 

 they are in their element. As for the Arab villages they 

 are all alike, mud walls, low houses, narrow streets, filthy 

 as can be, and here and there squares planted with date 

 palms, oranges and lemons, which relieve the scene. 

 The Arab dress is very monotonous, — like the desert 

 you see nothing but their gray cloaks ; occasionally a 

 gaudily dressed woman on the doorsteps with her silver 

 bangles and rings and necklaces. The bazaars of this lit- 

 tle place and of the Arab villages we have seen are not 

 very gaudy, but at any rate they have not been con- 

 taminated by French influence, as at Tunis or Constan- 

 tine, where they are no longer characteristic. Still even 

 here the goods for sale are gradually becoming the very 

 flimsiest of European make in competition with the hand- 

 made native work. There are in a store here plenty of 

 reptiles and insects for sale, but so badly preserved that 

 I do not care to get any." 



