Lippincotts Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 | Page 5

Bourguignon, the landlord and landlady, were the sole occupants of the hotel. It was impossible, they said: they dared not admit us, as in consequence of a quarrel with the authorities their license had been taken from them. At last our importunity triumphed. On appealing to their humanity in our most pathetic and touching French, they said if we could get a written permission from the commandant-supérieur for them to open their hotel, they would do the best they could for us. We had no resource but to beat up the officer's quarters, which, under the conduct of an Arab guide, we soon reached. The servant who answered our summons said, "Monsieur le Commandant was at dinner." Politeness, however, was at this stage of the proceedings out of the question; so we coolly replied that he must leave his dinner and come to speak with a lady. We were not long kept waiting, and were most kindly and pleasantly received, the commandant giving us at once 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 très bien à 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 never can we forget the charm of unclosing our door in the early morning. What a flood of light and freshness and fragrance rushed in upon us while we dressed and prepared for the business of the day! Our apartment had a bare stone floor, its furniture consisted of two beds, two chairs and a deal table--nothing could have been more simple--yet this little nest in the desert appeared to us about the nearest imaginable approach to an earthly paradise. How we congratulated ourselves upon having had the courage to leave the dingy rooms at the other hotel to our travelling companions, and to force an entrance into this sweet spot! Our hosts, too, seemed delighted and most happy at having guests in their house once more.
[Illustration: NEGRO VILLAGE AT BISKRA.]
Every morning we rose at five, took tea in our arbor before six, and then sallied out to explore and photograph till ten, when we returned to breakfast. Then we retired either to our own apartments, or, if not too hot, to the shade of the garden, and did the dolce far niente till the sun had passed the zenith and had begun to sink in the west. Then, again, on foot or donkey-back, we visited