Camping in the Sahara

It was two years since our last visit to Touggourt. Warned in the meantime that progress and civilization were advancing into the desert by leaps and bounds* we approached it again with misgivings. So when at last, late on a hot Sunday afternoon, the train from the north wound slowly into the tiny terminus, it was cheering to find that the town was still unaltered and unspoiled. Nothing was new, except the fussy little Ford ear that was waiting to bump and jolt us over the sandy half-mile to the hotel Our kit deposited, we went out into the market place to renew acquaintance with people and ^ places, accompanied by Si Aly Sab, a Kabyle landowner who was again kindly acting as cara van leader for the trip. In the cool of the afternoon the square was full of Groups of of all classes, their flowing burnouses ranging from the spotless white of the well-to-do to the drab mud colour of the beggar, drifted past in twos and threes or squatted by the open shops talking, eternally talking. A string of camels, in charge of wild-eyed desert men and hung with heavy, pendulous sacks stuffed with henna from the south, stalked disdainfully through the crowd with a soft pad-pad of cushioned feet, on their way to the fondoufc. Crouched in the sand and dust, ragged and filthy hawkers of sweetmeats and vegetables cursed shrilly when bare-legged boys, clad only in a single garment open to the waist, drove too close to their little stock-in-trade tiny donkeys stagger ing almost hidden under loads of brushwood and greenstuffs. Here and there the scarlet cloak of a Spahi, the striking black or brown of a chiefs burnous, the vivid, clinging draperies of some veiled woman, made a splash of colour that arrested attention. Closely buttoned to the throat in his khaki tunic, alien to his surroundings and probably dreaming of the Paris he so seldom saw, an occasional French officer hurried in the direction of the distant barracks, acknowledging perfunc torily as he went the salutes of grinning Soudanese privates.