ishing this ancient thoroughfare that the Ministries gave me
this mission, which has given me the pleasure of your companionship."

"You are probably in for a disappointment," I said. "Everything
indicates that the commerce there is very slight."

"Well, I shall see," he answered composedly.

This was while we were following the unicolored banks of a salt lake.
The great saline stretch shone pale-blue, under the rising sun. The
legs of our five mehara cast on it their moving shadows of a darker
blue. For a moment the only inhabitant of these solitudes, a bird, a
kind of indeterminate heron, rose and hung in the air, as if
suspended from a thread, only to sink back to rest as soon as we had
passed.

I led the way, selecting the route, Morhange followed. Enveloped in a
bernous, his head covered with the straight _chechia_ of the Spahis, a
great chaplet of alternate red and white beads, ending in a cross,
around his neck, he realized perfectly the ideal of Father Lavigerie's
White Fathers.

After a two-days' halt at Temassinin we had just left the road
followed by Flatters, and taken an oblique course to the south. I have
the honor of having antedated Fourcau in demonstrating the importance
of Temassinin as a geometrical point for the passage of caravans, and
of selecting the place where Captain Pein has just now constructed a
fort. The junction for the roads that lead to Touat from Fezzan and
Tibesti, Temassinin is the future seat of a marvellous Intelligence
Department. What I had collected there in two days about the
disposition of our Senoussis enemies was of importance. I noticed that
Morhange let me proceed with my inquiries with complete indifference.

These two days he had passed in conversation with the old Negro
guardian of the turbet, which preserves, under its plaster dome, the
remains of the venerated Sidi-Moussa. The confidences they exchanged,
I am sorry to say that I have forgotten. But from the Negro's amazed
admiration, I realized the ignorance in which I stood to the mysteries
of the desert, and how familiar they were to my companion.

And if you want to get any idea of the extraordinary originality which
Morhange introduced into such surroundings, you who, after all, have a
certain familiarity with the tropics, listen to this. It was exactly
two hundred kilometers from here, in the vicinity of the Great Dune,
in that horrible stretch of six days without water. We had just enough
for two days bef