To The Garden Of Allah

( Originally Published 1923 )

BATNA'S only interest to tourists is that of a junction point for other more interesting places :Constantine, Timgad, El Kantara, and Biskra.

We are leaving the land of the donkey and entering the land of the camel; that is, generally speaking. Both are still seen, but in our trip to El Kantara, which was through a scorched, barren, forbidding country, we were continually passing groups of Arabs with camels wending their way homeward or to market, also caravans with long strings of camels, often thirty or forty in number.

El Kantara is only about forty miles south of Batna and is the gateway to the Sahara Desert. It is so called due to a narrow cleft in the Aures Mountains, which here appear like a great rock wall through which the caravan route of centuries of travel has passed on its way into the mysterious desert to the south. These mountains and the surrounding country reminded me very much of Arizona, that section just north of Phoenix, with the same kind of red, purple, and buff rocks of opal colors overlooking the desert, —a place where nature spilled a pot of paint, or mixed soil with paint, and taking palette and brush tinted the landscape in a riot of color. In a ravine at the very base of the rocks is a small river washed to considerable depth, its banks bordered with palms, among which are clustered adobe houses, —a very beautiful oasis indeed, of seventy thousand palm trees. The product of the date palm is the lone article of commerce of all these oases. We have descended considerably from Batna, which is about thirty-five hundred feet in altitude and in winter is quite frosty. Immediately after one passes through the gateway of El Kantara, he realizes that the plateau land is left behind, and the desert is now near at hand.

An interesting little Arab village adjoins the oasis. The houses are built of adobe, have flat roofs, and are windowless, reminding one of the early pueblos of the Indians of New Mexico. The narrow street through which we passed was filled with indolent natives who appear always to have plenty of time to live; work might be postponed but never a friendly chat or their favorite game of draughts or the sipping of black coffee from tiny cups. Even here, a lesson may be learned by us Americans who never find time to live until we discover it is too late to begin.

A short distance beyond El Kantara, a low range is crossed and from its heights we got our first glimpse of the great, silent Sahara stretching out to a limitless vision. The impression made upon me was exactly the same as when in my youth I first beheld the ocean, —it seemed limitless. The Oasis of Biskra was visible a few miles to the south, a green patch in the surrounding desert. Beyond was a boundless expanse of desert appearing like an ocean on a gray day; not even a mountain was seen (except the range we had just crossed) to lend a guiding beacon : a horizon as level as the sea and over which was a cloudless sky. As we journied on, here and there were observed small patches of Arab tents on the desolate desert, their only habitation, derelicts on the yellow sea of parched soil, as though fate had decreed that these nomads should ever keep moving, drifting, as the desert sands. They have reduced their existence to the meagerest simplicity, changing their abodes without hesitation. Along the roadside were several ruins of adobe walls and buildings, and we actually passed hundreds of camels,—strings of camels, squadrons of camels, a continuous procession of camels in charge of brown natives; the desert was dotted with them. Their noiseless, cushioned feet and the immobile features of their Arab riders as they passed made them appear almost phantom-like navigating an uncharted sea of waste sands. And yet there is something enchanting about the desert; it casts over one a spell that is al-luring.

We entered the "Queen City of the Desert," as Biskra is called; a city made famous by Mr. Robert Hichens' dramatic story, "The Garden of Allah." It is the Mecca for all tourists, whose ultimate objective in visiting this portion of Africa seems to be Biskra. Its winter climate is delightful, for we had descended from the mountains and plateau to the north and were now only three hundred and sixty feet above sea level. Its streets were filled with Oriental life, men and women, Arabs, Jews, Moors, and Negroes, the latter so black that even an American who is accustomed to seeing blacks finds himself stopping and looking in amazement. In the market, mingle vendors and buyers, bargaining with a deliberate avidity befitting the leisured, dignified Arab. The buildings are whitewashed, one or two-storied affairs, with flat roofs, above which rise the domes and minarets of the mosques. Biskra is the commercial center of the Sahara and has a population of ten thousand. Strings of desert caravans from the numerous oases in the great desert to the south were constantly arriving laden with their freight of dates. The oasis of Biskra contains two hundred fifty thousand date palms; and, scattered throughout the great Sahara, there are numerous oases, which contain from fifty thousand to one hundred fifty thousand palms, the products of which come to Biskra as a central market. These oases appear like emeralds set in a matrix of sand, a startling contrast of luxuriant growth with that of the surrounding aridity.

The date is an important part of the daily food of the native inhabitants of this country. It is particularly rich in sugar. The date palm is known to bear fruit for two centuries, and the female tree yields per year from one hundred to three hundred pounds of dates, which this year are worth about twenty cents a pound. The duty of the male tree (which produces no fruit) is to fecundate the blossom of the female, the blossom showing in the spring and maturing fruit in the fall. The sandy, alkaline soils of the deserts, when adequately irrigated, seem especially adapted to the date palm. There is an Arab proverb regarding this fruit which says—"Its feet in the water, its head in the fires (sunlight) of heaven." The palm leaves are used for making matting and baskets, and the fibre of the bark for rope. The date is one of the chief sources of revenue of the countries to which it is indigenous.

At the edge of the city and bordering on the desert, is Count Landon's garden, Villa Ben-event, often mistaken, by those who have not read Mr. Hichens' book, for the "Garden of Allah." In reality, according to an Arab saying, "The desert is the Garden of Allah." You enter, through a portal in the whitewashed wall enclosing the garden, into a quiet haven of rest, a subdued light in a shade of greenery, the music of rippling water and singing birds, the play of sunlight and shade on spotless pathways. There is no need of my attempting to describe this place when extracts from Mr. Hichens' book give such a perfect pen picture.

After a servant had knocked at the gate of the garden, Domini was admitted and saluted by Smain, the Arab gate keeper, and told "You can go where you will," and then this genie of the garden, as he was referred to, carrying a rose, escorted Domini through the grounds. "She stood on a great expanse of newly raked, smooth sand, rising in a very gentle slope to a gigantic hedge of carefully trimmed ever-greens, which projected at the top, forming a roof and casting a pleasant shade upon the sand. At intervals white benches were placed under this hedge. To the right was the villa. She saw now that it was quite small. There were two lines of windows—on the ground floor and the upper story. The lower windows opened on to the sand, those above on to a verandah with a white railing, which was gained by a white staircase outside the house built beneath the arches of the arcade. The villa was most delicately simple, but in this riot of blue and gold its ivory cleanliness, set there upon the shining sand, which was warm to the foot, made it look magical to Domini. She thought she had never known before what spotless purity was like.

"He pointed with his rose to a large, white building, whose dazzling walls showed here and there through the masses of trees to the left, where a little raised sand-path with flattened, sloping sides wound away into a maze of shadows diapered with gold.

"`Let us go down that path,' Domini said, almost in a whisper.

"The spell of the place was descending upon her. This was surely a home of dreams, a haven where the sun came to lie down beneath the trees and sleep. . . .

"She was already conscious that Smain with his rose was showing her the way to her ideal, that her feet were set upon its pathway, that its legendary trees were closing round her.

"Behind the evergreen hedge she heard the liquid bubbling of a hidden waterfall, and when they had left the untempered sunlight behind them this murmur grew louder. It seemed as if the green gloom in which they walked acted as a sounding board to the delicious voice. The little path wound on and on between two running rills of water, which slipped incessantly away under the broad and yellow-tipped leaves of dwarf palms, making a music so faint that it was more like a remembered sound in the mind than one which slid upon the ear. On either hand towered a jungle of trees brought to this home in the desert from all parts of the world.

"There were many unknown to Domini, but she recognized several varieties of palms, acacias, gums, fig trees, chestnuts, poplars, false pepper trees, the huge olive trees called Jamelons, white laurels, India-rubber, and cocoanut trees, bananas, bamboos, yuccas, many mimosas, and quantities of tall eucalyptus trees. Thickets of scarlet geranium flamed in the twilight. The hibiscus lifted languidly its frail and rosy cup, and the red gold oranges gleamed amid leaves that looked as if they had been polished by an attentive fairy. . . .

"Never before had she fully understood the enchantment of green, quite realized how happy a choice was made on that day of Creation when it was showered prodigally over the world. But now, as she walked secretly over the yellow sand between the rills, following the floating green robe of Smain, she rested her eyes, and her soul, on countless mingling shades of the delicious colour; rough, furry green of geranium leaves; silver green of olives ; black green of the eucalyptus ; rich, emerald green of fan-shaped, sunlight palms; hot, sultry green of bamboos; dull, drowsy green of mulberry trees and brooding chest-nuts. It was a choir of colours in one colour, like a choir of boys all with treble voices singing to the sun.

"Gold flickered everywhere, weaving patterns of enchantment, quivering, vital patterns of burning beauty. Down the narrow, branching paths that led to inner mysteries the light ran in and out, peeping between the divided leaves of plants, gliding over the slippery edges of the palm branches, trembling airily where the papyrus bent its antique head, dancing among the big blades of sturdy grass that sprouted in tufts here and there, resting languidly upon the glistening magnolias that were besieged by somnolent bees. All the greens and all the golds of Creation were surely met together in this profound retreat to prove the perfect harmony of earth with sun.

"A sort of ecstasy was waking within her. The pure air, the caressing warmth, the en-chanted stillness and privacy of this domain touched her soul and body like the hands of a saint with power to bless her.

" `I could live here for ever,' she added, `without once wanting to go out into the world.' .. .

"When the tall white door was softly shut by Smain, Domini felt rather like a new Eve expelled from Paradise, without an Adam as a companion in exile."

It is Hichens' fame that has made Biskra famous. To me there was little that might attract tourists. I have seen far more interesting markets elsewhere in Algeria, and I am never attracted by a lot of harlots sitting at their doors soliciting customers, and dancing girls twisting their bodies into suggestive contortions, sights which were here offered as some of the chief attractions for tourists. Its winter weather, however, is charming; and for those over whom the desert casts an alluring spell that constantly draws like a magnet, the Sahara is close at hand.

One may also here enjoy sunsets and sun-rises that have a charm belonging distinctly to the beginning and the ending of desert days. The sunset of the first day I arrived at Biskra was one to make a lasting impression. The evening sunshine spread a golden mantle over the desert. The western sky was aglow and clouds that hung slightly above the horizon were tinted in aerial tints which belong only to nature's paintings against God's sky. The mountains to the north curved southward into the view to the west and north-west of Biskra, and these were sharply defined, a dark bulk against the golden sky, a shadow-land for the houri. To the north the mountain peaks looked white as though snow-capped, their lower heights robed in deep purple. The tops of the date palms were silhouetted black against the brilliant sky. It lasted but a few fleeting moments, for the twilights are short, and soon night wrapped the silent desert in her mantle of dusk and above this mysterious land hung the stars in the heavens like bright jewels, revealing another beauty, a softer, mystic light which only the night discloses, a nocturnal song that bids our souls rest in peace, for God watches over the night as well as over the day.

On the road of life one milestone more!
In the book of life one leaf turned o'er!
Like a red seal is the setting sun
On the good and the evil men have done,—
Naught can today restore !

LONGFELLOW.

The sunrises are equally beautiful, and we usually enjoy them when alone, the imagination uninterrupted, free to take color from the sur-rounding landscape. When the day is beginning, nature again wakens from its hushed quietude, birds once more welcome the day and scatter music, and there is a gradual stir-ring and renewing of energies. I enjoyed a remarkable sunrise while at Biskra. The sky, which was partly clouded, was a deep red. Not far above the horizon was the waning moon, a thin crescent, below which hung the morning star, a jewel in an Oriental setting. The world was awakening, roosters were crowing, white-gowned figures, dimly outlined, were noiselessly passing in the still dark street below my balcony. The fronds of the palm trees were inky black against the red sky. The mountains to the north could be faintly discerned. Succeeding hues dissolved one into another, crimson, golden, pink, and gradually, too, the clouds dispersed and the sun appeared a bright golden sphere tinting the purple out-line of mountain tops with a lavender hue, a thin, filmy, mysterious haze to which neither photography nor brush and paint could give adequate expression. Thus the day begins in the oasis of Biskra, within the Great Sahara.

Any one visiting Biskra should not fail to take the short journey to Sidi Okba, an oasis of sixty thousand palms, a few miles south-east of Biskra. Here is located the tomb of Sidi-ben-Nafir, a great Arab conqueror of the seventh century. The tomb is within a famous mosque said to be the oldest building in northern Africa.

Sidi Okba is one of the most interesting native places I have seen on this journey. You approach the entrance gate to this town between the two high mud walls of the houses along the sides of a narrow lane leading up to the portal. This narrow roadway has the appearance of a deep, depressed entrance to a tunnel. Once inside you are soon within an open square, which is filled with débris and filth, donkeys, camels, Arabs, many children and swarms of flies. My guide and interpreter had to push his way through the crowd of children that filled the narrow streets and surged about me. Progress was only possible by the free and constant use of a whip which he carried. I cautioned him to rely upon the severity of his mien and the crack of his whip's lash, rather than upon the sting of its application, to open a channel through the ebb of junior humanity.

We entered the Court of the Old Mosque, and made our way to a door giving entrance to the room containing the sacred tomb. A strip of matting was unrolled leading from the door to the front of the sepulcher, that I might walk thereon without the soles of my shoes touching the floor of this holy of holies. I am always disposed to respect those things that others reverence; however, the tomb was not impressive, and its decorations of silk banners and ostrich eggs were surely unique. It is such distinctive customs, nevertheless, that make other lands seem strange to our own, and an American interpretation of eastern customs may hardly be expected to coincide with the view held by a Berber.

Accompanied by one of the priests bearing a lighted candle, I ascended the dark winding stairs of the minaret and from its balcony looked out upon the flat tops of the mud hovels making up the town. The feathery tops of the date palms stood high above these low roofs. Beyond in every direction, the eye looks upon the barren desert with its vaulted blue sky.. It is customary to give a contribution to the custodian of the mosque. They tell you it brings you good luck and then, too, it is easy to be generous where a few coins equal a largesse.

I returned to the street, flanked with its tiny shops, and walking slowly, edged my way among Arabs, donkeys, and the ever increasing mob of children, who eagerly seized the paper covers of the film-pack negatives as I tore them off, perhaps as souvenirs of an American's visit. The children were outnumbered only by the swarms of flies that infested and completely covered the raw meat, sheep heads, and so forth that were offered for sale in the open native booths. Blindness, which is a common affliction of the people of northern Africa, is due to neglect and ignorance and also, in a large measure, to the flies which spread eye trouble from one to another.

These Mohammedans may well praise Allah, if for no other reason than for the bright, clear, penetrating, purifying, microbe-destroying rays of the sun. It is a wise Providence that has provided protection against our own destruction.

I arranged for a further journey into the desert engaging two camels and their Arab drivers. We left Biskra in the early morning and passed through the old adjoining native town of Biskra with its narrow, meandering streets enclosed by the mud walls of the houses and their adjoining courts and gardens. Little irrigation ditches ran beside these lanes, which were shaded by the feathery fronds of the date palms. Before the doors of the windowless mud hovels were seen women with tattooed faces, dressed in colorful garments. Children make the street their playground, but must scatter to the sides to provide a thorough-fare for our camels and for the caravan that we meet coming from the desert.

For a few miles, the desert is perfectly flat and I am told that during the war it was irrigated and wheat was grown thereon; but it was no great distance until we were in the midst of rolling, windswept sand dunes, like great waves, or in shape like giant snow drifts, smooth on one side, steep on the other, often their surfaces carved with ripples and playful sand pictures etched by the wind. To most people, the desert is hot sand and sun ; but "the eye sees what the eye brings with it," says one writer. Its endless view and its brilliant sun-shine present an effect that is quite indescribable. The very face of the country is silent, a mysterious silence as though the hush of death fell upon it; a death as certain as the lack of water. A limitless expanse opens before you and, as you enter, closes behind you. A landscape of distance, ever in the glare of a relentless sun. It is monotonous, sad, oppressive, mysterious, silent; an immense land of parched soil, but, withal, possessing a weird fascination. Ships of the desert ply this sea of waste sand, traveling twenty, even sixty, miles in a day, carrying loads of three hundred or four hundred pounds, existing on scrubby grass that grows sparsely on the desert, and doing with-out water for four or five days. Only Arabs know and explore its haunts and understand some of its mysteries. Hichens says, "I don't think any one can ever really know the desert. It is the thing that keeps calling, and does not permit one to draw near."

We saw many camel caravans, moving slowly, bringing their freight of dates from the oases. It is the land of the nomads. Flat, brown, striped tents, the only habitation of groups of these wandering people, were scattered on the great plain of drifting sand. There passed two stately camels, caparisoned with decorated trappings. On the one rode a much be-robed woman, her face veiled, a child riding with her and both swayed by the uncomfortable gait of their mount. On the other was an Arab with stolid features, holding in contempt, I suppose an European astride a camel, which, I will admit, appears incongruous to me. They came from the high-skied desert and were bound towards Biskra, perhaps to worship at the Mosque, or for a holiday in this desert metropolis, or they may have been making a pilgrimage to the sacred tomb of Sidi Okba, to pay their reverential respect to the great Mohammedan warrior who overran North Africa in 68o A.D.

What I saw of the Great Sahara is by comparison with its area as is a punctuation mark to the page of a newspaper. The Sahara is a great desert region that extends from the Atlantic eastward to the Nile and from the Mediterranean provinces on the north to the Niger river and Lake Tchad on the south. Its area is approximately three and one-half mil-lions of square miles, equal to the whole of Europe and nearly as great as the entire United States and Alaska. The upper region is a vast low area, in places one hundred feet below sea level and composed largely of sand dunes or sand mixed with a brown soil or an undulating, rocky surface. The southern portion of the Sahara is a high, rocky plateau reaching an elevation as great as eight thou-sand feet. Throughout the desert are interspersed the fertile, life-giving oases.

It is an interesting Arab world that stretches from the Mediterranean southward across the mountain ranges and the wide expanse of the Sahara, to the coast of the Gulf of Guinea two thousand miles to the south, and from the Moroccan coast on the Atlantic, eastward three thousand miles, to the eastern boundary of French Soudan. Although sparsely inhabited, this great area contains French subjects, Moors, Arabs, and Sundanese, equaling France's own population of forty millions.

Have you ever ridden a camel? You will find it an interesting experience, with possibly a painful impression. Talk about horse rheumatism putting a tender-foot out of business; just let him try riding a camel.

We have visited a strange land far from home, and there comes a longing for certain ones of the home fireside to bear us company.

When we returned to Biskra and were passing the Arab cemetery, we met a chanting crowd of men carrying a corpse in its winding sheet upon a litter, the racked and broken tenement of a soul that had moved on from the misery and penury of his lot to a new day,—a new vision, wider than his "Garden of Allah."