One might well grow crazy at the idea of
the primary difficulties involved in grafting upon the desert soil this
ordered mechanical efflorescence, this frenzied blossoming of human
activity.
What is happening?
They are separating the crude phosphate from its natural impurities;
drying, pounding, and loading it upon trains for removal to the sea-board.
That is all.
_Chapter XIV_
_PHOSPHATES_
A light railway leads up to the hills where the phosphates lie. Here you
may see the fiends at work. A legion of wild-eyed, swart and nearly nude
creatures are disembowelling the hoary mountain: visions such as this must
have floated before Milton's eye when he drew his picture of Mammon, who,
with his horde of demons, opened in the hill a spacious wound--
Ransacked the centre, and with impious hands
Rifled the bowels of our mother Earth
For treasure better hid....
The workers are chiefly of three races: Tripolitan, Khabyle (Algerian),
and Moroccan; they live in separate clusters among the rocks, each with
their peculiar national traits and mode of building; there is hardly a
woman among them all.
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