and Morocco is the chief market for this
traffic in humanity, the slaves being brought chiefly to Morocco City.

But if a fever lays hold of the traveller for penetrating into the
unknown Sus, what must be felt of the great Sahara, that waveless inland
sea of sand, with its eternal stretches of depressionless wastes
reaching on, past horizon after horizon? Perhaps an occasional oasis,
green as young corn; a well; a feathery date-palm; a melon-patch. But
rare are these things, and for the most part the Sahara is an endless
desert which few Europeans could cross and live. Its ancient lore, its
mystic traditions, give it a fascination all its own. Imagine the
ostrich-hunting on its borders; picture the natives riding their
unequalled breed of horses, the _wind-drinkers_, which carry their
masters a hundred miles a day, and which, ridden after the birds up-wind,
gradually tire them down, until they can be knocked on the head with a
bludgeon; the Arabs too, themselves, with the unforgettable manners
possessed by such as Abraham, and handed down from time immemorial; last
of all, Timbuctoo, the Queen of the Desert, the fabled home of the
voracious cassowary,--does not the picture imperiously summon the
traveller "over the hills and far away"? Very far away; for Timbuctoo is
twelve hundred miles from Mogador, and a journey there would mean at
least forty days across the Sahara, through a country belonging to
peoples in no way friendly towards "infidels," where oases are few and
far between.

Some day we may know the Sahara under other conditions, for a scheme was
started years ago with the intention of flooding the great desert by
means of a canal from the Atlantic Ocean, which should carry water on to
El Joof, an immense depression well below sea-level somewhere in the
centre. Thus, where all is now sand, would lie a vast sea: we should
"boat" to Timbuctoo. So far, however, the scheme has begun and ended in
words.

But though the great Sahara is desert pure and simple, it is a mistake
to imagine it devoid of life. Even as there has never yet been found a
collection of aborigines without its totem, neither are there any
extensive parts of the globe where life of some sort does not exist. The
Sahara is little known, chiefly because the oases in the centre are
occupied by intensely hostile and warlike tribes, whose animosity is
chiefly directed towards the French, whom they hate with a deadly hatred.
But the edges of the grea