Over her travelling
costume, already sufficiently repulsive, she wears a tennis jersey,
which accentuates the angularity of her figure, and in her person she
seems the very incarnation of the respectability of the British Isles.
It would be more equitable, too - so long are those legs of hers,
which, to be sure, have scant interest for the tourist - if she carried
the donkey.
The poor little white thing regards me with melancholy. His ears
twitch restlessly and his beautiful eyes, so fine, so observant of
everything, say to me as plain as words:
"She is a beauty, isn't she?"
"She is, indeed, my poor little donkey. But think of this: fixed on
thy back as she is, thou hast this advantage over me - thou seest her
not!"
But my reflection, though judicious enough, does not console him, and
his look answers me that he would be much prouder if he carried, like
so many of his comrades, a simple pack of sugarcanes.
CHAPTER XI
THE DOWNFALL OF THE NILE
Some thousands of years ago, at the beginning of our geological
period, when the continents had taken, in the last great upheaval,
almost the forms by which we now know them, and when the rivers began
to trace their hesitating courses, it happened that the rains of a
whole watershed of Africa were precipitated in one formidable torrent
across the uninhabitable region which stretches from the Atlantic to
the Indian Ocean, and is called the region of the deserts.
