rary! Such as never before a post in the South had seen. All
the texts consecrated, under whatever titles, by antiquity to the
regions of the Sahara were reunited between the four rough-cast walls
of that little room of the bordj. Herodotus and Pliny, naturally, and
likewise Strabo and Ptolemy, Pomponius Mela, and Ammien Marcellin. But
besides these names which reassured my ignorance a little, I perceived
those of Corippus, of Paul Orose, of Eratosthenes, of Photius, of
Diodorus of Sicily, of Solon, of Dion Cassius, of Isidor of Seville,
of Martin de Tyre, of Ethicus, of Athenee, the _Scriptores Historiae
Augustae_, the _Itinerarium Antonini Augusti_, the _Geographi Latini
Minores_ of Riese, the _Geographi Graeci Minores_ of Karl Muller....
Since I have had the occasion to familiarize myself with Agatarchides
of Cos and Artemidorus of Ephesus, but I admit that in this instance
the presence of their dissertations in the saddle bags of a captain of
cavalry caused me some amazement.

I mention further the _Descrittione dell' Africa_ by Leon l'African,
the _Arabian Histories_ of Ibn-Khaldoun, of Al-Iaquob, of El-Bekri, of
Ibn-Batoutah, of Mahommed El-Tounsi.... In the midst of this Babel, I
remember the names of only two volumes of contemporary French
scholars. There were also the laborious theses of Berlioux[3] and of
Schirmer.[4]

[Footnote 3: Doctrina Ptolemaei ab injuria recentiorum vindicata, sive
Nilus Superior et Niger verus, hodiernus Eghiren, ab anitiquis
explorati. Paris, 8vo, 1874, with two maps. (Note by M. Leroux.)]

[Footnote 4: De nomine et genere popularum qui berberi vulgo dicuntur.
Paris, 8vo, 1892. (Note by M. Leroux.)]

While I proceeded to make piles of as similar dimensions as possible I
kept saying to myself:

"To think that I have been believing all this time that in his mission
with Morhange, Saint-Avit was particularly concerned in scientific
observations. Either my memory deceives me strangely or he is riding a
horse of another color. What is sure is that there is nothing for me
in the midst of all this chaos."

He must have read on my face the signs of too apparently expressed
surprise, for he said in a tone in which I divined a tinge of
defiance:

"The choice of these books surprises you a bit?"

"I can't say it surprises me," I replied, "since I don't know the
nature of the work for which you have collected them. In any case I
dare say, without fear of being contradicted, that never b