Men of middle years will still
remember the excitement produced by this scheme which originated with
Tissot, though another name will for ever be associated with it, that of
Roudaire, a man of science dominated by an obsession, who clung to this
project with the blind faith of a martyr, his enthusiasm growing keener in
proportion as the plan was proved to be futile, fantastic, fatuous. True,
the great Lesseps had taken his part.
Desolation reigns on this morass of salt, where the life of man and beast,
and even of plants and stones, faints away in mortal agony. Unnumbered
multitudes of living creatures have sunk into its perfidious abysses. "A
caravan of ours," says an Arab author, "had to cross the Chott one day; it
was composed of a thousand baggage camels. Unfortunately one of the beasts
strayed from the path, and all the others followed it. Nothing in the
world could be swifter than the manner in which the crust yielded and
engulphed them; then it became like what it was before, as if the thousand
baggage camels had never existed." Yet it is traversed in several
directions, and if you strain your eyes from these heights you can detect
certain dusky lines that crawl in serpentine movement across the
melancholy waste--caravan tracks to the south.
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