Winter in Algiers : with notes on Hammam R'Irha Biskra and other places of interest in Algeria / by Alfred S. Gubb.

  • Alfred Samuel Gubb
Date:
1912
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: Winter in Algiers : with notes on Hammam R'Irha Biskra and other places of interest in Algeria / by Alfred S. Gubb. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    In December the fields are already bedizened with gay flowers, and in this limpid air the winter sun d i ff u s e s delightful brightness and warmth throughout the day. In J a n u a ry, gr o w t h proceeds apace ; the spare corners are occu- pied by the large, glossy, dentated leaves of the Acanthus, which sup- plied architects with the design for the ornamentation of the Corinthian column ; the Asphodel, beloved of poets, rears its stalk, soon to be adorned with an array of white flowers, from which emanates a power- ful, thoroughly disagreeable odour ; the giant fennel (Ferula), from a bed of feathery green, sends up its mossy stem to a height of several feet, crowned' Young Bedouins. bv tufts of yellow flowers; the dusty green®- foliage of the Absinthe shrub fills in the hol- lows, and by the end of the month the vari- ous members of the Li ds family add their J bright hues to the floral picture. Of field flowers the most conspicuous is the sweet Alyssum. These tiny white flowers, redolent of honey, grow in abundance in the fields above Mustapha, covering them with a sheet of floral snow. There is plenty of tall, odourless