The whole Wady M'Zab lay under the eyes of the travellers,
as if they looked down over the rim of an immense cup. Here, some who
were left of the sons of Tyre and Carthage dwelt safe and snug,
crouching in the protection of the valley they had found and reclaimed
from the abomination of desolation.
It seemed to Victoria that she looked on one of the great sights of the
world: the five cities, gleaming white, and glowing bronze, closely
built on their five conical hills, which rose steeply from the flat
bottom of the gold-lined cup--Ghardaia, Beni-Isguen, Bou-Noura, Melika,
and El-Ateuf. The top of each hill was prolonged to a point by the
tapering minaret of one of those Abadite mosques which the girl thought
the most Eastern of all things imported from the East. The oasis which
gave wealth to the M'Zabites surged round the towns like a green sea at
ebb tide, sucked back from a strand of gold; and as the caravan wound
down the wonderful road with which the Beni-M'Zab had traced the sheer
side of their enchanted cup, the groaning of hundreds of well-chains
came plaintively up on the wind.
The well-stones had the obelisk shape of the minarets, in miniature; and
Negroes--freed slaves of the rich M'Zabites--running back and forth in
pairs, to draw the water, were mere struggling black ants, seen from the
cup's rim. The houses of the five towns were like bleached skeletons,
and the arches that spanned the dark, narrow streets were their ribs.
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