The foregoing is an account of a day in the world’s greatest desert; a day in the heart of the Sahara—travel at its worst; not at its best—that is what I have endeavoured to describe.
We were then about 200 days out, and the camel-caravan travelled 405 days before the end, so it may be that I have learned a little of the desert.
Should that be so, and should pen be able and reader forgiving, I humbly try, in the contents of this book, to set down something of a little-known land; going swiftly to the subject I would reveal, and not slowly along the trail where the footprints of my camels were sometimes all that there was to record over oceans of wasting sand.
In a previous book, Out of the World, I dealt with the journey of a 1st Saharan Expedition so far as the region of Aïr: wherefore this work endeavours to touch almost entirely upon new ground (beyond Aïr) explored on my last and more comprehensive expedition across the entire Sahara.
CHAPTER III
A SHIP OF THE DESERT
CHAPTER III
A SHIP OF THE DESERT (AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL)
“I am not riveted nor screwed together, neither am I steel plate nor seasoned timber: wherefore I am not like ship of the sea in physical construction.