To one who has been brought up in the belief that cleanliness is next to godliness, the most unpleasant feature of desert travel is the lack of facilities for bathing. You never appreciate the luxury of a tub, soap, and an unlimited supply of warm water until you find yourself in a hot and dusty land where they are unobtainable. The Compagnie Générale Transatlantique—or, as it is usually referred to in North Africa, the “Transat”—has supplied this need in the score or more of admirably equipped hotels which it has established along the main routes of travel, but, once you leave the beaten paths, a bath-tub, or the water with which to fill it, is as unobtainable as ice in Hades. In the Hôtel de l’Oasis at Gabés, and again at the residency at Houmt-Souk, we had been provided with large, circular receptacles of tin into which the Arab servants had poured an inch or so of tepid water, but these extremely sketchy ablutions had about as much resemblance to a real bath as the shivering damsel depicted in “September Morn” has to the surf-riders at Waikiki. So when I learned that the hot springs of El Hamma, a little oasis town on the route to Tozeur, had been famous as a bathing-resort ever since Roman times, I insisted that we spend the night there instead of at Gabés.

Though spring was now well advanced, and though we were in the edge of the Sahara itself, it was a cold gray day when we set out for El Hamma, and the biting, dust-laden wind which swept across the steppes struck through our heavy rugs and greatcoats and chilled us to the marrow. Shivering, I thought wryly of our friends at home who were doubtless picturing us as sweltering beneath the torrid sun of Africa. Why the Transat considers it worth its while to operate a rest-house at so remote a spot as El Hamma, where European visitors are few and far between, I cannot imagine. But there it was, a Mexican-like, one-story structure of adobe, quite unprepossessing as to its exterior but really charming within, its patio or inner courtyard inclosed by a sort of cloister with Moorish columns from which opened the rooms. In the center of the courtyard there was a small pool and fountain, flanked by palm-trees; and later on, when the weather became warmer, there would be a profusion of flowers. The place was in charge of a Frenchman who had received his culinary training in a Paris restaurant, an exiled Boniface whose sole object in life appeared to be to make his rare guests comfortable and contented. The sight of European faces and the sound of European voices must have been very welcome to him, for he was the only white man in the town.

The hammam, we learned, was about half a mile away, on the other side of the village. Guided by a domestic from the rest-house, we lost no time in starting thither, for we were tired, chilled, and thickly veneered with desert dust and looked forward eagerly to the luxury of immersing ourselves to the chin in steaming water. Remembering its fame under the Romans, I had pictured in my mind’s eye a rather imposing place, with comfortable dressing-rooms and, no doubt, a series of marble pools and steam-rooms such as one finds in native bathing establishments of the better class throughout the East. A rickety wooden door in a high mud wall was unlocked by an Arab attendant, who ushered us into a spacious inclosure, nearly the whole of which was occupied by a stone-bordered tank. Everything was in the state of untidiness and disrepair characteristic of Arab countries. The tank was filled with boiling water, it is true, from which rose clouds of steam, but its surface was covered with a thick green scum, and the place reeked with the noxious fumes of sulphur. The “dressing-rooms” consisted of a series of cubicles, floored with stone and thatched with palm-fronds and so cold and cheerless that the mere thought of disrobing in them made me shiver. Though, as it happened, no one was using the hammam at the time, the bathing was, I gathered, extremely mixed, Europeans and natives, any one, in fact, who could afford to pay the fee of a few francs, mingling in the pool in a state of complete nudity. I have spent too much of my life in frontier regions to be finical, but one has to draw the line somewhere. Our decision to abandon the idea of bathing was hastened when we saw three large gray water-rats furtively emerge from one of the dressing-rooms.

This was, we learned, the bathing-establishment de luxe of El Hamma, patronized only by the wealthier natives; the general run of Arabs utilize the numerous hot streams which meander in all directions through the town. These streams are supplied by springs which gush from sandy hillocks, and almost all of them are at a very hot temperature, often at the boiling-point. As in the case of the other hot springs found throughout Tunisia, most of them have medicinal properties and are said to be highly efficacious in the treatment of certain ailments, a fact which explains, no doubt, the Roman settlements in remote parts of the country, for, particularly during the luxurious and dissolute days of the empire, the Romans, as is well known, were subject to gout, rheumatism, eczema, and syphilitic diseases. The Arabs, who are extremely superstitious, assert that the springs of El Hamma were originally cold and devoid of medicinal properties, but that a beneficent marabout, a holy man of exceptional sanctity, was persuaded to spit into them one day, whereupon they became hot and mineralized!

In places the streams have eroded narrow gulches in the soft soil, and these the natives have here and there roofed over with palm-branches and matting so as to afford a measure of privacy, of which, however, they did not appear to avail themselves, for on every hand we encountered Arab men and boys splashing about and soaping themselves in the steaming waters, stark naked but quite unashamed. In a somewhat more secluded spot, where one of the streams broadened out into a fair-sized pool, was a bath reserved for the other sex, its banks dotted with women and girls in various stages of dishabille. Despite all that has been written about the excessive modesty of Moslem women-folk, who, when on the street, swathe themselves in shapeless garments and cover their faces to the eyes, the slim brown maidens of El Hamma disrobed themselves before us with utter unconcern, displaying their charms with as little reserve as the show-girls in Earl Carroll’s “Vanities.” Some of the younger ones were as graceful as the bronzes in a museum, with slim rounded bodies and firm pointed breasts, their clear olive skins suffused with pink and as smooth and lustrous as satin. They completely ignored our presence, disporting themselves in the pool with the abandon of water-nymphs, until I indiscreetly unslung my camera, whereupon a Cerberus in the person of a wrinkled crone suddenly appeared with a cudgel and, loosing a torrent of shrill Arabic invective, drove us away. Perhaps I am mistaken, but it struck me that the nymphs were sorry to see us go.

Dinner was awaiting us when we returned to the rest-house. It was a meal which prompted me to raise my hat, metaphorically speaking, to the genius and organization of the Transat, which feeds and lodges the traveler along the fringe of the Sahara as efficiently as Fred Harvey does along the line of the Santa Fé. We had vegetable soup, and fish fresh-caught in the Gulf of Gabés, and roast lamb (which is to all Moslem lands what roast beef is to England), and a crisp green salad, and for dessert such a soufflé as only a French chef can produce, the whole topped off by a cobwebbed bottle of Mouton Rothschild and the syrup-like Arab coffee. Then we huddled about a meager wood fire—for wood is a luxury which must be use sparingly in the desert—to smoke and sip our liqueurs and peruse two-months-old copies of “L’Illustration” and “Le Rire” until it was decently late enough to go to bed.

The bedrooms were as damp and chilly as a refrigerator, but, having in mind the tragic experience of three Americans at this same rest-house some weeks before, we did not insist on any attempt to heat them. The Americans in question had, despite the warnings of the Arab servants, ordered no less than four charcoal braziers lighted in their room. Then, in order still further to raise the temperature, for it was a bitterly cold night, they had proceeded to close all the doors and windows, thereby transforming the room into what very nearly proved to be a lethal chamber. When their chauffeur sought to arouse them the following morning there was no response. The door was broken down, and the travelers were found unconscious in their beds, overcome by the charcoal fumes and at the point of death from asphyxiation.

We breakfasted by candle-light and then set off into the chilly dawn. Harvey had urged on us the wisdom of starting early, for the way to Tozeur lies across the salt lakes of the Djerid, a dismal and treacherous morass which is none too safe by day and exceedingly perilous after nightfall. These salt lakes form one of the most singular features of the Tunisian Sahara, stretching in a charm which has only two short breaks right across the southern end of the regency from the Gulf of Gabés to the frontier of Algeria, which they penetrate for a considerable distance. They are called by the French (with their usual inaccuracy of spelling and pronunciation) chotts, whereas the word should really be the Arabic shat, the native term for a broad canal, a lake, an estuary. Strictly speaking, however, the shats are not lakes at all at the present day, but shallow depressions, some feet below sea-level, which during more than half the year are expanses of dried mud thickly incrusted with white salt, this saline veneer giving them at a little distance the appearance of broad sheets of ice or water. During the winter, however, when the effect of the rare rains is felt, the shats frequently contain several feet of water, which, by liquefying the mud into a quicksand, makes them quite impassable for man or beast. But during the other seven months of the year they can be crossed on foot or horseback, and, when the sun has baked the surface to a sufficient hardness, a motor-car may venture on them with reasonable safety.

Even during the dry months, however, the shats are exceedingly treacherous; surfaces which give every indication of solidity at a few yards’ distance are often but thin crusts which will give way without the slightest warning beneath the weight of animals or men, precipitating them into a sea of slime from which escape is frequently impossible. One hears innumerable stories of the tragedies which have been enacted in the shats. “A caravan of ours,” relates one Arab writer, “had to cross the shat one day; it was composed of a thousand baggage-camels. Unfortunately one of the beasts strayed from the path, and all the others followed it. Nothing in the world could be swifter than the manner in which the crust yielded and engulfed them; then it became like what it was before, as if the thousand camels had never existed.”

It seems probable that at no very distant period, as time is measured by geologists, the shats formed an arm of the Mediterranean, for, as has already been remarked, they are several feet below its level, and shell-fossils in great quantities have been found in them. Unfed by tributary rivers, this inlet gradually contracted and silted up. Meantime the sand-banks extended across its mouth until they joined, whereupon, cut off altogether from the sea, the waters rapidly evaporated under the fierce African sun, leaving the chain of saucer-like depressions which we see to-day. Confirmation of this theory is found in the legend which exists among the desert tribes, of a sea, with ports and ships, which once stretched across the northern end of the Sahara from the shores of the Syrtes to the foot of the Aurés; this Arab legend is corroborated by Greek myth; and support is lent to both by the findings of the scientists.

By some authorities this one-time Saharan sea has been identified with the semi-mythical Lake Tritonis, in whose foul depths dwelt the old sea-god Triton, who, it will be remembered, befriended Jason and his Argonauts. According to Greek mythology, the Argo, while on her homeward voyage from Colchis, was driven south by unfavorable winds to the coast of Libya, the little vessel eventually becoming entangled in the ooze of an inland sea. Here the Hellenic adventurers were entertained for a time by certain alluring nymphs of the neighborhood—ancestresses, no doubt, of those whom I saw disporting themselves in the pool at El Hamma—but were rescued by Triton, the patron deity of seafarers, who guided them to the open sea again. Merely a fable, you say? Well, perhaps. But don’t be too certain. For, when you stop to think about it, there is nothing inherently improbable in the narrative that has been handed down to us of the wanderings of a Hellenic sea-adventurer named Jason, who, with an equally adventurous crew, set out from Greece in quest of gold (the ancients were accustomed to gather alluvial gold in sheep-skins; hence, the Golden Fleece), just as the Argonauts of a later day set out for the gold-fields of California. Their frail craft driven from its course by a Mediterranean norther, the exhausted mariners eagerly availed themselves of the shelter offered by an arm of the sea which opened from the Syrtis Minor, now known as the Gulf of Gabés; but the waters grew shallower as they sailed eastward, the sand-bars more frequent, and finally the Argo went hard and fast aground. This much being admitted, surely it is quite within the bounds of probability that some wild-looking native fisherman, bearing the three-pronged fish-spear, or trident, which has always been associated with the sea-god, and which is commonly used in those parts to-day, offered his services as a pilot and helped them out of their difficulties. The truth of the matter is that most of the Greek myths, when stripped of the fanciful embroideries with which seamen of all periods have been prone to embellish their tales, will be found to have a very substantial substratum of fact.

Those of the elder generation will doubtless recall the scheme, widely discussed in the early eighties, which was deceptively styled “the flooding of the Sahara.” Its author, Colonel François Roudaire, maintained that, by connecting the shats with the Mediterranean at a point a few miles to the north of Gabés, it would be possible to create an inland sea with an average depth of seventy-eight feet and an area of more than three thousand square miles, or nearly twice the size of Great Salt Lake in Utah. Ferdinand de Lesseps reported favorably on the proposed enterprise, which was based on the following facts. The Gulf of Gabés is separated by a sandy ridge one hundred and fifty feet high and thirteen miles across from the Shat-el-Fejej, a depression which extends into the Shat-el-Djerid which in its turn is separated by a still narrower ridge from the Shat Gharsa. The Shat Gharsa is succeeded westward by a chain of smaller depressions, and beyond them lies the Shat Melrir, whose northwestern end is not far from the Algerian town of Biskra. Were these shats connected and flooded, the Algerian hinterland would be brought into direct communication with the sea. De Lesseps estimated that the work could be completed in five years’ time at a cost of about thirty million dollars, and on the strength of this a company was formed to carry the project out. But with the death of Colonel Roudaire and the odium attaching to all enterprises with which de Lesseps was associated as a result of the Panama scandals, the scheme fell into abeyance. The company became simply an agricultural concern, devoting its energies to the creation of oases by the sinking of artesian wells. In view, however, of the pronounced interest which the French are now taking in the development of their North African possessions, a revival of the enterprise may be looked for in the not far distant future, and the lost sea the Argo sailed long, long ago may again become a fact.

We sighted the shats when about a half-day out from El Hamma, whence our way had led across a most dismal and depressing land, sans inhabitants and sans vegetation. The stony plain which we have been traversing since daybreak now broke away in a long, irregular slant, sloping down to the banks of what appeared to be a broad river of ice. The illusion was perfect. Even in the Syrian Desert, famous for its mirages, I have never seen anything so deceiving. Sweeping in either direction in spacious curves to the horizon, its level surface twinkling and flashing in the sunlight until one is blinded by the glare, this amazing phenomenon looks for all the world like a mighty frozen river winding out of the nowhere into the unknown. The brooding silence, the utter solitude, the ancient myths associated with it, the feeling of eeriness and oppression—all these served to recall that other mystery-enshrouded region described by Matthew Arnold:

As we rolled cautiously out upon the surface of the shats the illusion of an ice-field gradually disappeared, and I would have taken an oath that we were approaching a broad sheet of water. Even Harvey was deceived and apprehensive, speculating uneasily on its probable depth and on whether we should be able to get through. Yet, like the lake-mirages of Arabia, the water seemed always to keep just ahead of us, receding as we advanced, tantalizingly beckoning us on. That others had preceded us across the shats was evidenced by the numerous imprints of camels’ feet in the yielding soil, and by the stakes with which the méharistes of the Camel Corps had marked the route. These we followed meticulously, as, in the Alps, one follows the red-painted stones which show the way across a glacier. Nor was it reassuring to note here and there the tracks of animals which had strayed from the beaten path; as there were no return tracks, it was to be assumed that they had been engulfed in the hungry quicksands. To venture upon the shats with so heavy a car as ours involved, as I knew full well, a certain measure of risk, and I experienced a distinct feeling of relief when we gained the other side.

Now we were in the Djerid, as the Arabs call the oasis-sprinkled region immediately to the south of the shats. Djerid is the Arabic for palm-frond, and, inferentially, for palm-grove, the name being given to this tract of sand because of the numerous oases which dot it, in the words of some old writer, like the spots on a leopard’s skin. To those who have obtained their ideas of the desert from motion-pictures (made in California) and certain popular but quite inaccurate works of fiction, the word “oasis” conveys a picture of a small patch of vegetation, some scattered clumps of palm-trees, a limpid pool, and, perhaps, a few striped Arab tents, the whole surrounded by a sea of yellow sand. The description is accurate enough as far as it goes, perhaps, but it should be understood that oases are not necessarily of small area. Many of them, on the contrary, are of the size of American counties, with numerous villages, extensive systems of lakes and streams, and vast forests of date-palms. Indeed, some of the great oases of the Inner Sahara, such as Gourara, Tuat, Tafilet, Tidikelt, and Timbuktu, are as large as the State of Rhode Island and support considerable populations, both sedentary and floating, for the larger oases are nearly always important centers of the caravan trade.

Our immediate objective, our jumping-off place for the country of the great dunes, was Tozeur, a sand-locked oasis town built on the narrow isthmus which separates the Shat-el-Djerid from the Shat Gharsa. Tozeur is one of the most beautiful, prosperous, and interesting oases in the Tunisian Sahara, its ten score springs supplying a perfect network of streams, rivulets, and irrigation canals, which in turn support upward of half a million date-palms. Seven little villages nestle amid this palm-forest, the tops of the trees, when seen from a little distance peeping above the intervening sand-dunes, looking like feathered bonnets on the heads of a savage army.

Though a site so lavishly supplied with water, and commanding the great trade-routes from Carthage and Cirta to the south, must have been occupied and cultivated since the very earliest times, the origin of Tozeur is hidden behind the misty curtains of antiquity. It was evidently a place of considerable importance in the days of Ptolemy, who calls it Tisouros; in the depths of its palm-groves one is shown the remains of what was once a Roman watch-tower, later a Byzantine campanile, then a Moslem minaret, and is now a crumbling ruin; it was the scene of many bloody and stirring incidents during the Fatimite wars of the ninth and tenth centuries; in 1068 the Arab geographer Bekri wrote that almost every day caravans of a thousand camels or more left Tozeur laden with dates. Then, for eight hundred years, it seems to have dropped from sight, “the world forgetting and by the world forgot.” But now it is coming into its own again. Already a narrow-gage railway has been pushed southward, across the steppes, across the shats, through Gafsa and Metaloui, and now the hoot of the tin-pot, ten-mile-an-hour locomotive is echoed by the palm-groves of Tozeur. In preparation for the expected tide of tourist travel the Transat has erected in the edge of the oasis a fine modern hotel, with French-made furniture, and porcelain bath-tubs with hot and cold running water, and excellent table d’hôte meals, and a spacious terrace where in the evenings the guests may lounge in deep cane chairs over their coffee, listening to native music and gazing dreamily into the brooding, star-lit desert. And from here set out the great Renault twelve-wheelers, which churn their way across the sandy sea to Touggourt, to Ourgla, to Ghardaia, and beyond. A few more years, a very few, and Tozeur, so long a wild and woolly frontier town, will be as sophisticated—and as spoiled—as Biskra.

I think I have already remarked that Tozeur has upward of half a million date-palms, most of them of the deglat variety, whose luscious, semi-transparent, amber-colored fruit melts in the mouth like so much honey. These date-palms form a veritable forest, along whose paths you may wander for hours and never weary of its beauty. And in your ears is always the pleasant sound of running water. Overhead the palm-tops interlace to form a continuous canopy of glossy green, through whose interstices the sun sifts to carpet the ground with shadows as delicate as lace. Beneath the palms, peach and apricot and almond trees blossom in pink and snowy clouds, and the brown earth beneath is thickly inlaid with the green patina of gardens and little patches of sprouting grain; for land is so scarce and valuable in the oases that every foot is cultivated with almost pathetic care, the owners grudging even the narrow paths which separate their holdings.

Quite unforgettable is the memory of my first excursion into the green depths of Tozeur. All about me the stately date-palms rose in a wilderness of vertical lines. Fascinating brooks gurgled across my path to lose themselves amid the trees. The air was heavy with the fragrance of peach and orange blossoms. Toiling amid the groves were bronzed, bare-limbed, brawny men in snowy turbans. Groups of tattooed women in flowing garments of blue homespun shuffled by, baskets of produce balanced on their heads, their heavy necklaces and anklets tinkling. Bathing in a secluded pool were some naked nut-brown maids who, uttering cries of feigned dismay, fled precipitately at our approach. From the leafy depths beyond came the plaintive strains of some reed instrument. My guide said that it was an Arab boy tootling on a native flute. But I knew better. The music I heard came from the Pipes of Pan.