FOOTNOTE:
[1] The word Sahara does not necessarily convey the idea of a desert immensity. Inhabited at certain points, it is called Fiafi; habitable at certain others, it takes the name of Kifar, a word whose signification is the same as that of the common word Khela, abandoned; habitable and inhabited at yet other points, it is called Falat.
These three words represent each of the characteristics of the Sahara.
Fiafi is the oasis where life retires, about the fountains and wells, under the palms and fruit trees, sheltered from the sun and choub (simoon).
Kifar is the sandy and void plain, which, however, when fertilized for a moment by the winter rains, is covered with grass (a’ cheb) in the spring; and the nomadic tribes that ordinarily camp around the oases go thither to pasture their flocks.
Falat, finally, is the sterile and bare immensity, the sea of sand, whose eternal billows, to-day agitated by the choub, to-morrow will lie in motionless heaps;—the sea that is slowly ploughed by those fleets called caravans.—General Daumas, Le Sahara Algérien.