After about an hour's flight, I can suddenly see palm trees, meadows, gardens. It's an oasis, but a fairly small one, only about a yard across. No sooner do they appear than they vanish. But scarcely have we left one behind when another rises over the horizon before us, then after that there's a third, above which we're passing like a tornado.

Each of these oases only contains one house. A man comes out, attracted by the noise of our aerial apparatus. I don't see anybody else. Have these islets got only the one inhabitant?

Then a new problem confronts me, more insoluble still. Beyond the first oasis, our flying machine follows a line of posts spaced out so regularly that I imagine them joined by a wire. I must be dreaming. The telegraph (unless it's the telephone)in the open desert?

After we pass the third oasis another, much more important, rises before us. I can see trees, not only palm-trees but several others, looking like karites, baobabs, acacias. I can also see cultivated fields, splendidly cultivated indeed, where a number of Negroes are working. Then walls rise above the horizon towards which we are rushing. It's an unknown city we are approaching, for here's our fairy-bird starting to descend. Now here we are above it. It is only a moderately sized town but how queer! I can clearly make out semi-circular concentric streets, laid out on a rigorous plan. The central part is almost deserted, and at this time of day contains only a few Negroes who hide in their huts when they hear theroaring of our machines. In the outer part, on the other hand, inhabitants are not lacking. They are whites who are looking upwards, and who (God forgive me) seem to be shaking their fists at us. I vainly ask myself what we've done to them.

But the machine carrying me descends more quickly. We cross a narrow river, then all at once I feel that we're falling like a stone. We're really describing a spiral which makes me feel sick. My heart is rising into my mouth. Where am I going? ...

No, the roaring of the screw has stopped and our machine has touched down. For a few yards it glides over the surface with decreasing speed and then it stops.

A hand grasps the sack around my head and pulls it off. I have only just time to replace the bonds on my hands.

The sack removed, my limbs are freed. But whoever lets me loose has seen the trick.

"Who is the damned dog's son that has made this knot?" asks a drink laden voice.

As you might think, I take care not to reply.

After my hands, my feet are unbound. I move them with a certain pleasure.

"Get upl" comes an authoritative order from someone I cannot see.

I don't ask to do anything else, but to obey is not easy. After the circulation of the blood has been checked so long, my limbs refuse to act. After a few fruitless attempts, I manage to succeed and I give a first glance at my surroundings.

Not very gay, the landscape.