To produce all this vegetation, however, there must be water, and, its absence being conspicuous in the south, it may interest the reader to hear how an oasis is watered.
The whole of southern Algeria is crossed by rivers, which in the winter have a certain amount of water, but which in the summer are dry, and are in reality only drains to carry off the rain which comes down from the hills after storms.
The real rivers of the south follow the water-courses, but they flow underground, and it is only when they rise to the surface that they form an oasis, and, as the Arabs say, the palm-trees spring up with their feet in the water and their heads in the flames. Anywhere along these courses wells can be sunk and the water tapped at a depth varying from one hundred and twenty to twelve hundred feet, and in some cases there are broad underground lakes, known to the natives as Behar Tahtani—the sea of the underworld.
Sand Storm Getting up on the Sahara
Waterfall of Boiling Water, Hammon, Meskoutine
Arab Falconer Setting Out to Hunt
Wherever, therefore, the river rises to the surface and forms an oasis the land becomes very rich, and all vegetation is of the most luxuriant. Sand mixed with irrigated earth is excessively fertile, and produces everything from roses and strawberries to jasmine and lemons. Cereals would thrive and cover endless acres if there was enough water. Water—that is the question of daily life in the great south. You may cross endless wastes of desertic plain with only a few tufts of alfa grass here and there, and suddenly come upon a great oasis, green and fresh in the watered land. But it ends as abruptly as it began, and, although you may find yourself standing in a garden of flowers and fruits and green grass, two hundred yards away is the blasted desolation of the Sahara.