Let them go! The undiluted Orient is still wide enough; and
no one will appreciate the metamorphosis more than the native citizens
themselves, who love, above all things, to play about and idle in the
shade of trees; perhaps, in the course of time, they will realize that not
only Allah, but also man, is able to plant and take care of them. Your
Arab often has a love of nature which is none the worse for being wholly
unconscious.
At Nefta there is no impure region, properly so called. The searching
sunbeams and the winds are inimical to all the lush concomitants of decay;
the sand also plays its part; so every dead dog, and every dead camel,
arrests the flying grains and is straightway interred--transformed into a
hillock, trivial but sanitary.
There are tombs, of course, tombs galore; but what strikes one most are
the numerous shrines erected to saints alive or dead, of which I have
already spoken.
You will do well to visit the Christian cemetery. It lies on an eminence
above the town and is almost buried under deep waves of sand, which have
risen to the summit of the surrounding walls and drowned the three graves,
all but their tall stones that emerge above the flood.
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