A Trip to the Great Sahara; Constantine, Biskra, Stif, Algiers, with a Camera

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1884 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER IV. CONSTANTITSTE TO BISKRA. There are only two trains a-day to Batna, and some six hours are necessary for a journey of seventy-five miles. Batna, so the guide-books say, means simply an encampment for the night, and I.think the guide-books are quite right. No one in his senses would think of encamping more than a night if he could help it. Before you are halfway there, the country has changed for the worse, and you are in the midst of dry arid plains, with an occasional stretch of water without a blade of grass or green herb beside it. A tropical sun beats down fiercely over the black mud waste, and for miles and miles there is not the shadow of a tree or bush. It might be the great desert itself already, if it were not for the fact that we are amid the mountains, and at an elevation of some 3,000 feet. The photographer en voyage does not now-a-days require to develop his plates as in the old collodion era, but boiling water is sometimes welcome to him, whether as a luxury or a necessity. I always take the means with me to obtain this, whenever there is occasion to rough it, whether the idea is to purify water by boiling, or to make an occasional cup of tea. So I will here mention how I am provided in this respect. A flat sponge spirit-lamp is in my outfit, and a tin flask of spirit. This is not methylated spirit, but pure, so that if any leaks out among your linen there is no disagreeable smell. A little saucepan, with a handle that doubles inwards, I prefer to a kettle, for it takes my tea in a tin-foil package. Moreover, I carry a dozen little cambric bags, the use of which I will explain. When I want a cup of tea, my saucepan (it holds about a pint) is filled with water and made boiling; then as much tea as is necessary is put into...