A few hours later our telegram is delivered on the other side of the world, and the news, that we are safe and well at unheard-of Touggourt far out on the Sahara desert, is known to family and friends at home.
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THE MARKET-PLACE OF TOUGGOURT
On awakening next morning we find that many of the caravans camped in the market-place over night have disappeared. When returning from the tower to the hotel the preceding evening, we had stumbled through acres of living things, for the market-place was buried beneath a redolent mass of camels, donkeys, mules, men, women, and children, all jumbled together in confusion. The crews of the various caravans had arranged shelters by piling up boxes and bales of merchandise, and in the nooks between heaps of date-*sacks and bolts of Manchester cottons they busied themselves during the early evening in cooking frugal suppers over tiny fires. We were lulled to sleep by the heavy breathing of that multitude and by the causeless groanings of a hundred
