Across the Sahara by Motor Car: From Touggourt to Timbuctoo

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T. Fisher Unwin, 1924 - 255 pagine
 

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Pagina 100 - ... terror and death, and nobody ever succeeded in finding their bodies or even their trail. A hot shroud had covered up everything. We stop frequently. We are plagued with hunger, but it is impossible to eat, for hardly have we opened a tin of food when it is instantly smothered in sand. We only succeed in munching some bits of dry bread by squeezing against the body of the car on the lee side, and even so we swallow a lot of sand. We are entirely covered with it. The sky is the colour of raw brick...
Pagina 162 - ... wall. He probably did this as a precaution, in order to be able to write his notes far from prying eyes. The mere fact of not writing from right to left, or in Arabic characters, might have revealed his identity. Then it would have been the end of him, and he would have suffered the tragic death of Gordon Laing, the British explorer, who was killed in the same street a few years later.
Pagina 232 - IV. IN PRAISE OF A MEHARI Instead of wings, I have my mehari. Praise to God the Mighty One, Who gave me my mehari, brown with white spots, To carry me where love calls. V. AN ELEGY OF LOVE The heart thou lovest and which loves thee not, Whatever thou do to strain towards him, he flieth. A sad torment for a thing it were better not to ponder. But if two hearts meet, it is heaven : It is better than all friends ; It is better than the whole world.
Pagina 231 - ... God, were she like a wooden bowl full of camel's milk, The moment she were unkind, I should not touch it. II. THE VIOLIN I humbly adore the acts of the most High, Who has given to the fiddle what is better than a soul, So that, when it plays, the men are silent, And their hands cover their lithams to hide their emotion. The troubles of love were pushing me into the tomb, But thanks to the fiddle, oh Son of ATcloum ! God has given me back my life. III. SADNESS OF A WOMAN WHOSE FRIEND DID NOT COME...
Pagina 48 - It is significant of sound workmanship that we hear no more of the rubber band except this further description: — ' While the pneumatic tire, even when doubled, digs into the sand without gripping it, and necessitates not only the employment of the shovel and the lever, but even mules and camels in difficult places, the caterpillar begins by heaping it up and planing it. And while it rolls over it easily without jerk or effort, it pushes it behind in progressing over the surface. One may almost...
Pagina 90 - ... de resistance arrives. These magnificent Tuareg, so noble and elegant, eat with a truly extraordinary savagery. Some of them will bite into a whole leg. When the meat offers any resistance, they will cut it off at the level of their mouth with a knife, and amiably pass on to us the remaining piece. Others will tear off a rib with their hands, and handle it and knead it well before presenting it to us. We never saw such a repast. There are no ewers for washing hands, as among the Arabs. If the...
Pagina 162 - ... triumphed over the fever which laid him low for three weeks, helpless and shivering, in a dirty hut, and the scurvy which rotted his jaws. When he entered Timbuctoo, on April 20, 1828, his bare feet were so blistered that they left a bloody track in the sand. Externally, the house where Rene' Caille" lived from April 20 to May 4, 1828, does not differ from its neighbours.
Pagina 231 - ... the young people by their parents in their leisure moments.4 Indeed the part played by the am^ad in the social life of the Tuareg is of unique importance, and we may gather from the following lines in what high esteem it is held: I humbly adore the acts of the most High, Who has given to the fiddle5 what is better than a soul, So that when it plays, the men are silent, And their hands cover their lit/1ams6 to hide their emotions.
Pagina 149 - Flossie scored a great success, a success like that of the Hoggar. At the present moment she is the most outstanding personality of Timbuctoo, the event of the day. Never have the inhabitants seen so small or white a dog. Here, as at Arrem Tit, the question of her real race crops up. Many were inclined to take her for an unnatural animal, connected, like our cars, with the somewhat diabolical cleverness of the Roumis. " All French manner," they said to each other with an air of wisdom.

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