Читать книгу The Sahara - Pierre Loti - Страница 5

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In the northern quarter of St. Louis, near the mosque, there stood a little solitary house belonging to one Samba-Hamet, trader on the upper river. It was a lime-washed house. The cracks of its brick walls, the crevices in its heat-shrunken wood-work harboured legions of white ants and blue lizards. Two marabout cranes haunted its roof, clacking their beaks in the sunshine, and solemnly stretching out their featherless necks when anyone chanced to pass along the straight, unfrequented street.

O the dreariness of this land of Africa!

The slight shadow of a frail thorn palm moved in its slow daily course along the whole length of the heated wall; the palm was the only tree in the quarter, where no green thing refreshed the eye. On its yellowed fronds flights of those tiny blue or pink birds, called in France bengalis, would often come and perch. But all around lay sand, sand, nothing but sand. Never a tuft of moss, never a fresh blade of grass grew on the soil, parched by the burning breath of the Sahara.