It was a golden hour among
those mounds of sand, and I grew rather sad to think that I should never
see the place again. How one longs to engrave certain memories upon the
brain, to keep them untarnished and carry them about on one's journeyings,
in all their freshness! The happiest life, seen in perspective, can hardly
be better than a stringing together of such odd little moments.
_Chapter XXII_
_THE DISMAL CHOTT_
Hearing that there are few or no tourists in Nefta just now, I left Tozeur
three days ago, an hour or so before sunrise.
This region, the Djerid, is all sand; an isthmus of sand thrust in between
the two Chotts of Djerid and Rharsa; the oases ara scattered about the
country, says some old writer, like the spots on a leopard's skin....
The air was keen, and I shivered on my mule, looking back often at the
dark forest of Tozeur, where I had spent some happy days.
After about five miles of comfortable wading through soft sand, I became
aware of a ghostly radiance that hovered over the pallid expanse of the
Chott. Abruptly, with the splendour of a meteor, the morning star shot up.
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