save one's soul!) and, above all, the immense, imposing, strangely fascinating threshold of the vast Sahara.

The little town itself is interesting, and still more so the native life within it, with many of its barbarous customs in full activity still. To the Arabs of the desert Biskra is what Paris is to the peasants of the northern French counties: a city of bewildering fascination, a great mart, a home of friends, a haunt of enemies, the capital of dissipation, the arbiter of the conduct of civilised life. To the visitor there is great store of interest, even if he do not leave the oasis, in the irrigated gardens and palm orchards-there are no fewer than 100,000 date-palms in Biskra-in the native streets and market, and in the military doings of the French garrison.

Several weeks should, if possible, be spent in Biskra. Almost every taste is appealed to, The lover of riding, driving, walking, shooting, hunting on horseback, falconry, exploring; the naturalist, botanist, and archæologist; the lover simply of nature and of humanity; the seeker of health merely, the sunshine-pilgrim, the follower of reposeful rest—one and all can find what they care for in Biskra or its neighbourhood. For the newcomer to the Orient it is a revelation. What excursions, too, across the Ziban, as the Algerian Sahara is called here, to Chetma (so familiar on the canvases of the Paris Salon!) with its hospitable old Sheik, who 'loves the French,' but cannot speak a word of their language; to Sidi-Okba, with its teeming and not over-friendly population—the Kairouan of Algeria— and to many other places, oases in the desert, Roman sites in the Aurès valleys, Hammam Salahin (Baths of the Saints) on the Col de Sfa, Bedouin encampments, mountain-Arab villages, to the austere barren lands round La Fontaine aux Gazelles, El-Kantara with its date-palms and wild gorge and wilder precipices, and so on, till one stops as it were for want of breath.

As for the drawbacks: first, the old difficulty of accommodation. The Hôtel du Sahara, beloved of artists, is by far the more pleasantly situated, as it is the more moderate and less pretentious. The Victoria is one of the best hotels in Algeria, but there is the objection of its somewhat desolate position outside the oasis and close to the gaunt railway-station to the north of the town. However, I saw the beginning of a large new hotel there last spring: so that Anglo-American visitors need not fear (save in the annual January cr February festà) lack of accommodation.

Secondly, there is the pervasive sand. This evil must be set against the magnificent climate, with its rainless skies and glowing sunflood. When sand-winds blow from the Sahara there is no escaping the thin irritating sparks of sand. Tightly closed windows save a southward room from being banked up like a dune by the sea, but not one's clothing or bed-linen from thin layers of the plague. Obviously there is peril here for some weak chests. Still, these sandVOL. XXXV-No. 203

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storms are rare during the winter-season: and the invalid will be safe in December and January, for it is then that a thin rain occasionally falls, though at long intervals, and but for an hour or so.

Thirdly, the water, without being impure, is not good to drink without previous filtration, and can be harmful. The streams and the Oued-Biskra are charged with magnesia.

Fourthly, the diet, even at the Victoria, is not as varied or as good as it might be, though certainly very much better here than at the Hôtel du Sahara. It would be insulting to goat's-flesh to call it desert-mutton; and in Biskra desert-mutton is the acknowledged stand-by.

These, however, are minor objections, For the well-to-do they need not exist (except the occasional sand-storm!); for the robust voyageur or seasoned traveller they represent at worst the fortune of war, to be accepted smilingly and forthwith made the best of.

To sum up in one sentence: Biskra is the Queen of FrenchAfrican health resorts. Thereafter, from the health-seeker's point of view, Hammam, R'Ihra: then Hammam Meskoutine: Algiers, and the rest according to what one needs or desires.

WILLIAM SHARP.

CHINESE POETRY IN ENGLISH VERSE

FOR many centuries the Chinese nation has closely cultivated the poetic art, and still turns out annually more poetry than all the rest of the world put together. Verse-making is an important factor in the national life of China. At the competitive examinations, through which admission is obtained to an official career, poetry divides the honours with prose. A student who can construct elegant verse is pretty sure of his coveted degree. If he

Can plant within that verse a thought

he is already well on his way towards dominion, e.g. as a Viceroy, over perhaps as many millions of his fellow-countrymen as are included in the population of the British Isles.

All modern Chinese statesmen are poets more or less. The late Marquis Tsêng, who taught himself English with only the aid of a Murray's Grammar and a Nuttall's Dictionary, began early to drop into poetry. The following Ode at Parting was handed by him to an English fellow-traveller on one of the local steamers :—

When we reach the mouth of the river,

See how the ocean red!

Very glad to meet you

And talk on the captain's bed.

Poets, properly so called, are not to be found in China at the present day. A poet is, in Chinese terms, a' wind man ;' that is, one whose spirituality is quickened by the divine Aura. He is, emphatically, born, and not made. Li T'ai-po (A.D. 699–762), the greatest of the 'old masters,' positively lisped in numbers. At ten years of age he indited the following impromptu :—

To a Firefly

Rain cannot quench thy lantern's light:
Wind makes it shine more brightly bright.

Oh, why not fly to heaven afar,

And twinkle near the moon-a star?

This, with a few similar effusions, brought him ultimately to the

notice of the Emperor, and he went up in Court favour like a rocket -to come down, alas! like the stick. But both before and after his fall he had committed much to paper which the Chinese of to-day treasure as the legacy of an Immortal. In later life he was an exile and a man of sorrows, which, after the fashion of Chinese poets, he did his best to drown in wine; until at length, if we can believe one account of his death, he finished by drowning himself. Alone at night on the deck of a pleasure-boat, after a carouse to which his boon-companions had succumbed, he composed the following lines:

Drinking Alone by Moonlight

An arbour of flowers

and a kettle of wine:

Alas! in the bowers

no companion is mine.

Then the moon sheds her rays

on my goblet and me,

And my shadow betrays

we're a party of three!

Though the moon cannot swallow

her share of the grog,

And my shadow must follow
wherever I jog,

Yet their friendship I'll borrow

and gaily carouse,

And drive away sorrow

while Spring-time allows. See the moon-how she glances

Response to my song!

See my shadow-it dances

so lightly along!

While sober I feel,

you are both my good friends;

When drunken I reel,

our companionship ends.

But we'll soon have a greeting

without a good-bye

At our next merry meeting
away in the sky!

With the concluding words the poet is said to have leant down to seize the moon's reflection on the water, when, losing his balance, he fell into the stream and was drowned.

Of course, Li T'ai-po wrote a good deal about the miseries of exile. The Chinese suffer horribly from nostalgia. To them exile is a curse indeed, even when it only means transfer to a distant post. Parting' is in fact a stock subject with Chinese versifiers. The term meant so much in the old days when an official would travel from Peking to Canton overland, a three months' journey, with all its deadly risks

of bandits, river-pirates, want of funds, storm, flood, and disease. In some such mood we can imagine that Li T'ai-po wrote hist

Farewell by the River

The breeze blows the willow-scent in from the dell,
While Phyllis with bumpers would fain cheer me up;
Dear friends press around me to bid me farewell:

Good-bye! and good-bye!—and yet just one more cup.

I whisper, Thou'lt see this great stream flow away
Ere I cease to love as I love thee to-day.

The following is a variation of the same theme, by the same poet; the only difference being that whereas in the lines above Li T'ai-po was himself the traveller, he is now bidding adieu to a friend:

Where blue hills cross the northern sky,
Beyond the moat which girds the town,
'Twas there we stopped to say Good-bye!
And one white sail alone dropped down.
Your heart was full of wandering thought;
For me, my sun had set indeed;
To wave a last adieu we sought—

Voiced for us by each whinnying steed!

The horses which neigh farewell are those on the large house-boat of the traveller and those remaining behind with the traveller's friends. who came to see him off.

Many pages would be required to exhaust the leave-takings even of a single poet. One more example, from the pen of the famous poet Wang Wei, will perhaps be enough for most readers:

Adieu

We parted at the gorge, and cried Good cheer!

The sun was setting as I closed my door;

Methought, the spring will come again next year,

But he may come no more.

The feelings of an exile on the way to his place of banishment have been thus expressed by Wang Ch'ang-ling:

Onwards to-night my storm-beat course I steer;

At dawn, these mountains will for ever fade.
Should those I leave behind inquire my cheer,
Tell them, An icy heart in vase of jade.

'Jade,' which is generally used as an emblem of purity, here signifies cold. True jade is known to the curio-hunter by its coldness to the tip of the tongue, as compared with the relative warmth of the imitation article.

The longings for home which are ever present to the Chinese exile are thus described by Kao Shih :