1890. After joining the French Navy, Loti (pen name of Julien Marie Viaud) saw the world from shipboard. He spent long months among the palm groves of the South Seas; he visited the scorching coast of Senegal and the seas of Iceland. A prolific writer, Loti used every strange and exotic scene as a background for his romance novels. The book begins: In descending the coast of Africa, after passing the southern extremity of Morocco, one travels for several days and nights in sight of an interminable country of desolation. It is the Sahara, the great sea without water, which the Moors also call Beled-el-ateuch, the land of thirst. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.