. The gateway to the Sahara; observations and experiences in Tripoli. and fatalism little knownand still less understood by thicker-bloodedmen whose lives are spent in struggle and ac-tivity against the adverse elements of northernclimes. Tripoli is a land of contrasts—rains whichturn the dry wadis [river beds] into raging tor-rents and cause the country to blossom overnight, then month after month without a showerover the parched land; suffocating days and coolnights; full harvests one year, famine the next;without a breath of air, heat-saturated, yellowsand wastes bank against a sky of viole
. The gateway to the Sahara; observations and experiences in Tripoli. and fatalism little knownand still less understood by thicker-bloodedmen whose lives are spent in struggle and ac-tivity against the adverse elements of northernclimes. Tripoli is a land of contrasts—rains whichturn the dry wadis [river beds] into raging tor-rents and cause the country to blossom overnight, then month after month without a showerover the parched land; suffocating days and coolnights; full harvests one year, famine the next;without a breath of air, heat-saturated, yellowsand wastes bank against a sky of violet blue;then the terrific blast of the gibli, the south-eastwind-storm, lifts the fine powdered desert sand ingreat whoofs of blinding orange, burying cara-vans and forcing the dwellers in towns to closetheir houses tightly. Arab character in a marked degree seems tobe the child of its environment and has inheritedmany of the characteristics of the great solitudesamong which it has dwelt for thousands of the one hand the Arab is hospitable and open- [32]. TOWN SCENES AND INCIDENTS handed; on the other treacherous, grasping, andcruel; seemingly mild and lazy, yet he is capableof performing extraordinary feats of labor. Hisreligion and literature are full of poetry, butmany of their tenets are lacking in his dailylife. In his architecture and design the highestartistic instinct is shown, yet the representationof any living thing is forbidden. Stoical anddignified, yet he is capable of being roused by anywandering marabout to an ungovernable state offanaticism; now you know him, again he is asmysterious and changeable as the shifting sandabout him; by nature he is a nomad, a dwellerin tents rather than in towns. Allah has be-stowed four peculiar things upon us, say theArabs: our turbans shall be to us instead ofdiadems, our tents instead of walls and houses,our swords as intrenchments, and our poemsinstead of written laws. By the creed of Islam all lines are drawn, alldi
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