[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.
FINGAL’S CAVE
(SCOTLAND)
SIR WALTER SCOTT
July 19, 1810.
Yesterday we visited Staffa and Iona: the former is one of the most extraordinary places I ever beheld. It exceeded, in my mind, every description I had heard of it; or rather, the appearance of the cavern, composed entirely of basaltic pillars as high as the roof of a cathedral,[2] and the running deep into the rock, eternally swept by a deep and swelling sea, and paved as it were with ruddy marble, baffles all description. You can walk along the broken pillars, with some difficulty, and in some places with a little danger, as far as the farthest extremity. Boats also can come in below when the sea is placid,—which is seldom the case. I had become a sort of favourite with the Hebridean boatmen, I suppose from my anxiety about their old customs, and they were much pleased to see me get over the obstacles which stopped some of the party. So they took the whim of solemnly christening a great stone at the mouth of the cavern, Clachan-an Bairdh, or the Poet’s Stone. It was consecrated with a pibroch, which the echoes rendered tremendous, and a glass of whisky, not poured forth in the ancient mode of libation, but turned over the throats of the assistants. The head boatman, whose father had been himself a bard, made me a speech on the occasion; but as it was in Gaelic, I could only receive it as a silly beauty does a fine-spun compliment—bow, and say nothing.