ce a
note to M. Bourguignon requesting him, as a personal favor, to do all he
could to make us comfortable, adding, with true French politeness, that
he only regretted that in his bachelor quarters he had not himself
accommodation to offer us.

Thus, one more of our troubles was happily ended, and in a wonderfully
short space of time we found ourselves refreshing exhausted Nature with
an excellent dinner, waited upon by our jolly landlord, who constantly
assured us that we should be very comfortable, "car on mange tres bien a
Biskra."

It is only on becoming acquainted with scenes and people which we have
been in the habit of picturing to ourselves that we realize how feeble a
power is the imagination. We found here everything so different from the
creations of our fancy. My idea of an oasis, for example, had been a
clump of trees, a spring of water and a little verdure. Here we found
one several miles in length, and with sixty thousand palm trees, a
considerable population, a market and a fort. Biskra is, however, the
largest and finest of the group of oases which stud this part of the
desert. It is the place of residence of the caid and the chief seat of
Arab commerce.

By the time we had dined it was already too dark to commence
explorations. It was only the next morning, when we rose refreshed and
rested, that we began to take in the various details of the new and
singular life to which we were being introduced.

First, as to our hotel. It consisted of a row of small, self-contained
houses forming two sides of a square. One of these little dwellings was
the dining-room, another the kitchen, and the others respectively the
guests' sleeping-chambers, a separate house being allotted to each. In
the centre of the square there was a charming garden, where roses,
sweet-peas and most of our summer flowers were blooming in full
luxuriance. Then, in the early season, when the springs give out their
fertilizing moisture and the sun has not yet attained its full scorching
power, the garden is one mass of beauty and blossom: later in the year
everything becomes parched and dried up, scarcely a blade remaining. In
the middle of the garden there was a bower overgrown with creepers and
shaded by a thick matting. This formed our saloon and reception-room,
and here we took our coffee, the gentlemen smoked their cigars and we
chatted over our adventures and prospects. Our rooms, or little houses,
all opened on the garden; and ne