The land of an African sultan Author:Walter Harris Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: the lakes of Shaf-al-akab, and the cork forests. Near the lighthouse one descends to a slightly lower level and proceeds along the face of the precipitous cliff.... more » Here it is most beautiful of all, just a narrow path in the wall of the precipice. Here and there rise great rocks, strange masses like church steeples and grotesque animals ; wild thick brushwood, where lurks the wary boar, grows on all sides, even over the steep face of the slope. Sometimes this brushwood meets overhead, rendering the road almost tunnel-like in appearance. I remember once riding along this none too pleasant road on a very fresh horse. I was accompanying two friends to Spartel, and was regaling them with stories of Morocco ; unluckily, just as I reached the point of each yarn, before I had time to bring it out, my horse would make a clean bolt, dashing along the precipitous path at a breakneck pace, and making me think that every moment I was to be hurled into the ocean hundreds of feet below. Besides, the whole effect of my stories was spoilt, which was annoying. The remedy was found, however, by Col. S., one of my friends, proposing that I should only whisper the point of the story so as not to allow my horse to know the moment to bolt. I found it most successful. Suddenly the lighthouse comes into sight, a tall white pillar, on the extreme N.W. corner of Africa. How the sea dashes and foams around the rocks at the foot of the cliff, rushing in and out of ,the great boulders in a dance of mad frenzy. We found our mules waiting for us here, and having despatched them to Gibeleh, a small village a littleway further on, we enter the lighthouse, drink coffee with the keeper, and sit for an hour or so on the rocks near by. It was a glorious afternoon, with just a fresh enough N.W. breeze to cover t...« less