A Short Adventure by Hilaire Belloc — Read

It was in Morocco: it was not yet day; and there was a little drizzling rain of that tiresome, feverish sort which you get in those outlandish countries south of Europe and cousin to the desert, only saved from being desert by this same evil rain which does sometimes fall on them. I woke and rose before my companions, and to their annoyance made them rise also, telling them that we needed every hour if we were to reach the sea before the next night.

There was no road, not even such a track as one may see in the American West. Only here and there the sign that wheels had passed over the interminable dusty mud of the plain. We started the unfortunate motor-car and jerked off northwards just as the sad, wet darkness was turning into a sad, wet day. Already the glimmering light showed us the forms of the land, but not yet any direction, and in that first half-hour, as the light grew, we twice urged back, at the peril of our gears, from thick boggy land to harder soil. Then, when it was full daylight, we could better determine our way. There was not a tree anywhere, not even on the distant mountains to the right. There was not a blade of grass. It was a wilderness, where I could see barren slopes and peaks as much as fifty miles away.