Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878, page 19 by Various Authors
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partments were respectively the sleeping-room of the master of the house, that of the women and that of the elder children; and, literally, the only furniture of these was a piece of boarding covered with matting. There was no bedding, no bed-clothing, no attempt at comfort of any kind. It is certainly not an expensive matter to set up house at Biskra, the climate of the desert making one independent of everything except a shade from the sun and a little food to sustain life. From the court a stair led up to the flat roof which covered in the four apartments, and this upper story formed the receptacle for all the filth of the family. The scene was disgusting in the extreme. In any other climate it must have bred a pestilence. Here, no doubt, this dire result is prevented by the extreme dryness of the atmosphere. After this visit I quite appreciated our good landlady's horror of the Arabs. "You see now," said she, "how it is I cannot bear even to buy fowls fed by such people."
During the time we remained at Biskra we only twice made excursions beyond the limits of the oasis--once to some hot sulphur springs a few miles out in the desert--springs of such wonderful efficacy in all rheumatic affections that were they in Europe they would speedily make the fortune of any watering-place. Here they are little known: however, a bath has been formed and roofed in, and our gentlemen enjoyed a dip in the warm water after their ride across the desert. From this bath one of them dated the cure of a severe pain in the leg which had caused him much inconvenience during the journey. Our other excursion was to the neighboring oasis of Sidi Okba, the ecclesiastical, as Biskra is the commercial, capital of the Ziban. Judging by appearances, one would say that commerce must be a much more thriving thing than religion, for Sidi Okba is in every way inferior to Biskra. The people are more squalid, the houses more wretched: the very mosque itself is in a dirty, tumble-down condition. Here we found no Arabs who could speak French