Tissint

Upon arriving in Tissint, a new region began for me: the sky, crops, people, dress—everything is different here from what I have seen before this day. Until now I was in mountainous country, with the climate and products of southern Europe. The inhabitants were the Chellaha, almost all dressed in white wool. That country had the Bani as its border. When we enter Tissint, after crossing the Bani, we set foot into a new world. Here, for the first time, the eye is drawn toward the south but sees not a single mountain: the region to the south of the Bani is an immense plain, sometimes white, sometimes brown, its rocky solitudes stretching out as far as the eye can see; a line of azure borders it at the horizon and separates it from the sky: this embankment is the left bank of the Drâa, beyond which begins the Hamada. This scorched plain has no vegetation besides some stunted gum-trees, no other relief than narrow ranges of hills, rocky, interspersed, and twisted around like sections of serpents. Alongside the cheerless desert are the oases, with their wonderful vegetation, forests of palm trees always green, qçars replete with wellbeing and wealth. Working in the gardens, stretched out nonchalantly in the shadow of the walls, squatting by the doorways of houses and smoking, one perceives a numerous population of men with black faces, Haratîn of a very dark color. Their clothes strike me first of all: all are dressed in indigo cotton, a fabric from the Sudan. I am in a new climate: there is no winter here; they sow in December, reap in March; the air is never cold; above my head, a sky ever blue,

Tissint is one of the largest oases of the Moroccan Sahara. It is located at the bottom of a basin whose edges are the Bani on one side and a ring of hills—rocky to the south, sandy to the east and west—on the other. In the middle of this circle stretches a plain of white sand: there stands the oasis, a forest of palm trees crossed by a lovely river, with qçars rising up to the edge of the groves.