The wander-thirst is like the drug-habit. Once you acquire it you are done for. It will never let you rest. There is no mistaking its symptoms: a hatred of the prosaic, the routine, and the humdrum; an aversion to staying long in one place; an insatiable craving to move on, move on—to see what lies beyond yonder range of hills, around that next bend in the road.

It is as persistent as it is insidious. There comes the stage when you think that you are cured of it. You delude yourself into believing that you have had enough of discomforts and privations and that it is high time you settled down and had a home. You weigh the respective merits, as a place of residence, of Long Island and Southern California; you even consult an architect and subscribe to “House and Garden” and “Country Life.”

But one day you casually pick up a list of steamer sailings, or stumble on your battered luggage plastered over with foreign labels, or whiff some exotic smell which brings back memories of the hot lands (there is no sense which stimulates the memory like that of smell), or see a vessel outward bound, or idly open a map, whereupon the old craving suddenly grips you like an African fever, and, almost before you realize it, you are on the out-trail once again.

The symptoms usually recur with the approach of winter, when the northern days grow short and gloomy, when the shop-windows are filled with fur coats and mufflers and galoshes, when the wind howls mournfully beneath the eaves o’ nights. But the attacks which are hardest to resist come in the early spring, when the snow has disappeared, and the smell of fresh earth is in the air, and the country-side is already green in spots. That is the time when it is most difficult to control one’s restless feet.

For a quarter of a century the urge of spring had perennially sent me packing to the Far Places. But when I came up from Equatoria, after a year spent beneath the shadow of the Line, I said to myself that I was through with wandering as a vocation—that I was going back to my own country and my own people and on an elm-shaded street in some tranquil community buy me a long, low, rambling house—a white house with broad, hospitable porches and green blinds. I had carefully planned it all out on the long African marches or during sleepless nights beneath the Southern Cross. I would join the local golf-club, and amuse myself with my horses and my dogs and my books, and keep my house filled with friends over the week-ends, and even go into politics in a mild way, perhaps. In fact, I proposed to do all the sensible, prosaic things for which I had never had the time before.

But, before sailing for America to put these laudable resolutions into effect, I met at a Paris dinner-table the gentleman who was at that time charged with the conduct of France’s colonial affairs. We had much in common, it developed, for he too had been on those distant seaboards of the world where the Gallic empire-builders are creating a new and greater France. Lingering over the coffee and cigars we talked shop—the future of Indo-China, Madagascar’s need of harbors, Miquelon and its fisheries, the Syrian mandate, the control of sleeping-sickness in the Congo, cotton-growing in the country round Lake Tchad.

“Why don’t you round out your survey of our possessions,” the minister suggested, “by taking a look at what we’ve accomplished in North Africa?”

“The North African tour?” I asked, laughing. “Algiers, Constantine, and Tunis, with a side-trip to the Garden of Allah? Thank you, no. After what I’ve seen I’m afraid that I’d find that sort of thing pretty tame. Besides, I’ve already been to North Africa any number of times. I once spent a winter in Tunisia, and Algeria and I was in Morocco back in the bad old days when unsuccessful pretenders to the Shereefian throne were carried about the country in iron cages lashed to the backs of camels.”

“I’ll wager that I can name some places in North Africa that you haven’t seen,” the tempter said persuasively. “How about a visit to Djerba—the island of the lotus-eaters, you know—and the desert sky-scrapers of Medenine and the troglodyte dwellings of the Matmata Plateau? Then you could push down into the Sahara, cross the sand-dunes of the Grand Erg by twelve-wheeler to Ouargla and Ghardaia, keep on to the Figuig Oasis, and so over the Atlas into Morocco.”

“Yes,” I remarked speculatively, “if I were going to do it at all I should certainly include Morocco. There are some parts of it which I have never seen, and it has rather worried me. I’ve always had a hankering to have a look at some of those kasbahs in the High Atlas, where the grand caïds live like the marauding barons of the Middle Ages, I am told. And, while I was about it, I should like to get into the forbidden Sus, and even to see a bit of Mauretania and the masked Touareg, perhaps.”

“That can all be arranged quite easily,” the minister assured me. “If you decide to go, I’ll write to Marshal Lyautey, who runs the show for us in Morocco, and instruct the officers commanding in the Saharan military provinces to give you every assistance.”

“Suppose we have a look at the map,” I suggested, half capitulating. (I could feel the old familiar symptoms coming on; already my feet were growing restless.)

We appealed to our host, who led us into his library and on the table spread a large-scale map labeled “Afrique du Nord Française.” There they lay before me, tempting as jewels, those glowing lands of sun and sand, of Arab, Berber, and Moor, of mosque and minaret. Set in the Mediterranean shore-line like great fragments of colored mosaic were the Barbary States—Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco. Below them, sweeping southward to the Great Bend of the Niger and the swamps around Lake Tchad, was the yellow expanse of the Sahara, crisscrossed with the thin black lines which I knew for caravan-routes and sprinkled with the patches of green which stand for palm-shaded oases. And far to the westward, where Africa almost rubs shoulders with South America, lay Mauretania, land of the Blue-Veiled Silent Ones, The Forgotten of God.

Now I maintain that it is as unfair to unroll a map before a man who is striving to overcome the wander-thirst as it is to offer cocaine to a reformed drug-addict. For how, I ask you, could one be expected to resist the lure of those magic names—Kairouan, Gafsa, Touggourt, Ghardaia, Laghouat, Sidi-bel-Abbès, Oujda, Fez, Mequinez, Mazagan, Mogador, Agadir? At sight of them my resolutions crumbled like Mexican adobe. Almost before I realized it my carefully made plans had been tossed into the discard, and instead of poring over plans and specifications with an architect I was overhauling my travel-gear and ordering riding-breeches from my tailor and making inquiries about the sailing-dates from Marseilles.

Yes, it was the map that was my undoing, for

There are three routes from France to French North Africa, and they are all served by the steamers of the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique, or, as it is better known to Americans, the French Line. The first is from Bordeaux to Casablanca, the chief seaport of Morocco; a four-day voyage, this, half of it in the Bay of Biscay. Speaking for myself, I have never found that ill-reputed body of water anything save smooth, but doubtless that has been my good fortune. The second route is from Marseilles to Algiers by the Mediterranean greyhounds, swift, luxurious vessels which make the crossing in something under four-and-twenty hours, so that you have scarcely said good-by to Europe before you are being greeted by Africa. The third route, and the one which we took, is from Marseilles to Tunis—a two days’ voyage if the steamer is not detained at Bizerta.

Of course there are other roads to Africa; roads which are more picturesque and interesting, perhaps, provided that speed and comfort are not essential. Thus one may travel by the Sud Express from Paris to Algeciras, a charming little Spanish coast-town across the bay from Gibraltar, whence small and rather dirty vessels cross the straits thrice weekly to Tangier in Morocco. The chief objection to this way is that, in order to reach French Morocco and the main lines of travel, it is necessary to traverse the Spanish zone by motor-car, a somewhat arduous trip and one which has heretofore been subject to interruption because of the troubles in the Riff.

There is an even more out-of-the-ordinary route to Barbary, but it is uncertain and in parts exceedingly uncomfortable, so, unless the traveler is prepared to put up with delays and discomforts, I cannot recommend it. This is by the fortnightly Italian boat from Syracuse, in Sicily, to Tripoli and thence by narrow-gage railway along the coast of Tripolitania to the present end-of-steel at Zuara. Here, by making arrangements well in advance, it is usually possible to obtain a motor-car for the two-hundred-mile journey across the desert to the French rail-head at Gabés, in southern Tunisia.

In deciding to enter Barbary through the Tunisian gateway we were influenced by reasons historical, climatical, and sentimental. To the historically minded traveler the east-to-west journey is more satisfying than the reverse route because, going westward, he follows the march of history, the hoof-prints of the Islamic invaders who, sweeping out of Asia behind their horsetail standards, carried fire and sword and the green banner of the Prophet along the northern shores of Africa until, halted by the Atlantic, they swung northward into Spain. To travel in the opposite direction would be equivalent to reading history backward.

Again, should you go to Barbary, as we did, in the late winter, the weather is more likely to be favorable in Tunisia than in Morocco, where cold, rain, and mud usually prevail until well into the spring. If, moreover, you purpose striking southward from Tunis into the desert, it is well to get that portion of the journey over with before spring is too far advanced, as after mid-April the heat becomes intolerable in the Sahara and the sirocco season begins.

From the dramatic point of view, as well, it is infinitely preferable to follow the journeying sun, for, whereas Tunisia is as civilized and well-behaved as Egypt, Morocco, save in spots, remains not far removed from barbarism, so that the peoples, customs, and scenes, instead of decreasing in novelty and interest as you press westward, become increasingly romantic and strange.

In making preparations for a journey in Barbary one should never lose sight of the fact that North Africa is a cold country with a hot sun. Most people, I find, labor under the delusion that Africa is synonymous with heat. This is due, I imagine, to our careless habit of generalization, of taking things for granted. Just as Canada was given a wholly undeserved reputation for frigidity by Kipling’s “Our Lady of the Snows,” so the pictures of sun-scorched deserts made so familiar by steamship-lines and tourist-companies have led to the assumption that every African country has, perforce, a torrid climate. Such misconceptions would be less general if people were more prone to consult the family atlas. There they would see that Tunis is on the same parallel as the city of Washington and that Algeria and Tunisia correspond in latitude to Virginia and North Carolina. The truth of the matter is that in the countries lying along Africa’s Mediterranean seaboard there are few evenings between November and May when a warm overcoat will be found uncomfortable, and even far south in the desert in the late spring I have shivered beneath three heavy blankets.

Yet an astonishingly large proportion of American visitors to North Africa appear to be wholly ignorant of the climatic conditions which prevail in that region. Staying in Biskra while we were there was a motion-picture company from California. While “on location” the actors wore pith helmets and white drill riding-breeches and shirts open at the neck and the other garments associated in the popular mind with life in the tropics, but, once the day’s filming was over, they wrapped themselves in sweaters, overcoats, and mufflers and huddled, shivering, about the open fire in their hotel. Those who saw that picture on the screen—it was called “Burning Sands” if I remember rightly—little dreamed that the actors who made it spoke their lines through chattering teeth and gesticulated with hands blue from cold.

There is one other popular misconception about North Africa which might as well be corrected now as later on. Save in the extreme south, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco are not flat, desert-like countries, as is frequently assumed. On the contrary, they are distinctly rugged and in parts extremely mountainous. Perhaps it will astonish some of my readers to be told that the High Atlas has a greater average height than the Alps and that at least one of the Moroccan peaks is higher than any mountain in the United States outside of Alaska. Though the Algerian ranges of the Atlas are not so lofty as those further to the westward, I have seen several inches of snow on the passes of the Grande Kabylie a few days before Easter.

I always like sailing from Marseilles. Perhaps it is because I have set out from there on so many long and fascinating journeys, but to me it has always been, along with Constantinople and Port Said and Singapore and Panama, a gateway to adventure.

On those sparkling blue-and-gold mornings for which the Côte d’Azur is famous I like to sit over my coffee beneath the striped awning of one of the restaurants along the Cannebière and watch the human panorama unroll itself before my eyes. Here one sees picturesque types from the Near, the Middle, and the Farther East; representatives of all of France’s far-flung colonial possessions. The gaunt, stooped man with the yellowed skin and tired eyes, in his buttonhole the red rosette of the Legion d’Honneur, is a colonial administrator, home on a much-needed and all too brief leave of absence from some God-forsaken outpost of empire in Syria, Somaliland, Madagascar, Indo-China. Here is a group of zouaves, boisterous, sun-bronzed fellows in tasseled fezzes and baggy scarlet trousers, fresh from service with the Army of Africa, who ogle every pretty girl they pass and pause for a round of drinks at every café. Tunisian marchands des tapis, gaudily colored rugs draped over their shoulders, shuffle along in heelless yellow slippers, urging their wares upon the patrons of the sidewalk restaurants until the exasperated waiters harshly order them away. A trio of bearded, grave-faced men, very dignified and aloof in their white hoods and flowing white burnouses, pace by unhurriedly, concealing their wonder at the unaccustomed scenes behind masks of Oriental imperturbability; they are powerful caïds from one of the Saharan provinces, visiting France for the first time as guests of the Republic. Down the center of the street, under the watchful eye of a grizzled sergeant, briskly marches a platoon of down-at-heel, out-at-elbow nondescripts—recruits for the Foreign Legion, with five years of iron discipline and heartbreaking desert service before them. Sauntering along beside a pretty woman is an officer of chasseurs d’Afrique, a light-opera figure in his flaring scarlet breeches, wasp-waisted sky-blue jacket, and képi piped with gold and silver braid. Staring with childlike curiosity at the displays in the shop-windows are yellow men from Annam, brown men from Tripolitania and the Red Sea countries, black men from the Ivory Coast and Senegal. Hulking negro stevedores rub shoulders with greasy, furtive-eyed seamen from Levantine coasters and Lascar stewards from the P. & O. boats in the harbor. Zigzagging along the pavement, arm in arm, comes a row of rollicking sailors from the fleet, scarlet pompoms on their rakishly tilted caps and the roll of the sea in their gait. And everywhere, seated at the café tables, mingling with the moving throng, are the filles de joie, the ladies of easy virtue, bold-eyed and carmine-cheeked, who find in the streets of the great seaport a happy hunting-ground.

When in Marseilles I like to make a little pilgrimage by funicular to Notre Dame de la Garde, the church of those who go down to the sea in ships, and, strolling through its dim, hushed transepts, to read the inscriptions, some naïve, some pathetic, on the hundreds of votive tablets placed there in gratitude and thanksgiving by those who have been saved from storm and shipwreck. I like to dine in the quaint little restaurants which fringe the waterfront on the delicacies for which Marseilles is famous—langouste, homard, crab, scallops, oysters, fish, and, of course, bouillebaisse. But particularly I like to stroll along the edge of the harbor, with its forest of masts and funnels, and watch the ships, flying the flags of many nations, coming from or setting forth for strange, far-off, outlandish ports on all the Seven Seas.

The short winter’s day was drawing to a close when the Duc d’Aumale nosed her way cautiously between the arms of the Marseilles breakwater and lifted to a choppy sea. From her lofty pinnacle above the city Our Lady on Guard seemed to bid us a benign farewell. Atop the cliffs off our port bow the Corniche Road twisted and wound and doubled upon itself like an uncoiled lariat tossed carelessly upon the ground. Further to the north, the peaks of the Maritime Alps reared themselves majestically skyward, purple-cloaked and ermine-caped. To starboard rose the rocky islet, crowned by the grim Château d’If, where Monte Cristo sought to ease his solitude by proclaiming, “The world is mine!” And before us, its foam-flecked surface turned to a field of dancing gold by the westering sun, stretched the Mediterranean—the road to Africa.