we should sleep instead at an oasis on the road called
Mugger.
Mugger, when we reached it, proved to be quite
as uninviting in appearance as it was in name. It
was a squalid, tumble-down looking village with a
half-ruined caravanserai overrun with goats and
fowls. It was impossible, so we determined to cross
the lake and push on at all costs for Tougourt.
We halted for an hour in the oasis to give the
camel a rest and a feed before subjecting him to the
ordeal of crossing the lake, and then left the oasis
and entered at once upon the shott beyond.
Aissa took off a charm he was wearing round his
neck and hung it over that of the camel, and, with
a muttered invocation to Sidi Abdullah, drove him out
on to the mud. El Haj took his stick in hand and,
with an audible curse at the foolishness and pigheadedness
of Europeans in general, and of me in
particular, proceeded to vent his ill-temper upon his
miserable beast. Both of my retainers were in the
worst of humours.
This was, perhaps, hardly to be wondered at, for
the road was almost impassable. The smooth salt
slime which covered the bed of the lake was as
slippery as ice. Not only the camel, but we ourselves
slipped with every stride we took, and in order
to get along with any degree of safety were compelled
to walk with the shortest of steps. Once
when El Haj was endeavouring to chastise the
camel for an unusually long slide by an unusually
heavy thwack, he lost his balance, and to the delight
of his cousin, and I have no doubt of .the . camel
also, fell down full sprawl on his side. It was a
most trying journey, but somehow or other, by dint
of appeals to Sidi Abdullah and to El Haj’s stick,
we managed, in spite of continual slips and a few
croppers, to get across. We were rewarded for our
exertions by getting at once on to sandy ground
beyond, which, hardened as it had been by recent
rain, afforded a very fair going.
We halted just before sunset for a short
rest in the desert, and then pushed on again for
Tougourt, which was still some ten or twelve
miles ahead.
The sky was overcast, and a cold, damp wind was
blowing which, accustomed as we were to the hot
weather which had preceded it, made us all feel
thoroughly cold and miserable. The night was very
dark, and for a considerable time the only guides
which we had to prevent us from straying off the
track were little mounds of earth thrown up for that
purpose every hundred yards or so on either side of
the road. As we approached Tougourt, however,
the minaret of the mosque and the observation
tower of the French fort showed themselves faintly
silhouetted against the sky, forming most useful
landmarks.
It was nearly ten o’clock when we reached the
town and made our way to our quarters situated in
a corner of the market conveniently near to the
fort.
Tougourt, the capital of the Wad Birh district,
was before the arrival of the French ruled over by
a line of Sultans known as the Beni Jellab. The