was the almost perpendicular bed of a stream, an affluent of the one
we had had the unfortunate idea of following that morning. Already a
veritable torrent was gushing over it with a fine uproar.

I have never better appreciated the incomparable sure-footedness of
camels in the most precipitate places. Bracing themselves, stretching
out their great legs, balancing themselves among the rocks that were
beginning to be swept loose, our camels accomplished at that moment
what the mules of the Pyrannees might have failed in.

After several moments of superhuman effort we found ourselves at last
out of danger, on a kind of basaltic terrace, elevated some fifty
meters above the channel of the stream we had just left. Luck was with
us; a little grotto opened out behind. Bou-Djema succeeded in
sheltering the camels there. From its threshold we had leisure to
contemplate in silence the prodigious spectacle spread out before us.

You have, I believe, been at the Camp of Chalons for artillery drills.
You have seen when the shell bursts how the chalky soil of the Marne
effervesces like the inkwells at school, when we used to throw a piece
of calcium carbonate into them. Well, it was almost like that, but in
the midst of the desert, in the midst of obscurity. The white waters
rushed into the depths of the black hole, and rose and rose towards
the pedestal on which we stood. And there was the uninterrupted noise
of thunder, and still louder, the sound of whole walls of rock,
undermined by the flood, collapsing in a heap and dissolving in a few
seconds of time in the midst of the rising water.

All the time that this deluge lasted, one hour, perhaps two, Morhange
and I stayed bending over this fantastic foaming vat; anxious to see,