Far south, beyond the Atlas Mountains, beyond that great, limitless
plain of the Talidat where nothing meets the aching eye but a dreary
waste of red-brown, drifting sand, one experiences some curious phases
of a life comparatively unknown, and little understood in European
civilisation. There, life to-day is the same as it was ten centuries
ago--the same as it will ever be: free and charming in its simplicity,
yet with many terrors ever present, and sun-bleached bones ever
reminding the lonely traveller that a pricked water-skin means the end
of all things.