Excerpt from The Desert Gateway Biskra and Thereabouts This book is an attempt to supply a need I was keenly conscious of during a long visit to North Africa last winter. Falling at once under the fascinating spell of the Arab people, whose life and religion excited in me the greatest interest and curiosity, I, with many other visitors to Biskra, sought almost in vain for answers to the many questions which daily presented themselves. And if books fail, what resource is there? The ordinary tourist, who is making a short visit, finds the Arab himself, when questioned, blank. Indeed, I doubt if there are any people under the sun who can, while preserving a charming courtesy, oppose to the curious such an impenetrable reticence as the Arab is capable of. I have tried to write the book I should have been glad to find already in existence at the beginning of my stay. My only claims to attempt it are the unusual length of my visit; my extreme good fortune in winning a measure of friendly confidence, by which I got past - if ever so short a distance - the barrier the Arab sets up; and the fact that since my return home I have been able to follow up these advantages by a study of such works as throw light on some of the mysterious problems one could not otherwise have solved. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.