What can they be, these strange little gardens?
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.

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And the sand, meanwhile, which covers the streets with its thick coatings, continues to deaden the sound of our progress, out of compliment no doubt to all these watchful things that are so silent around us.
At the crossings and in the little squares the obelisks become more numerous, erected always at either end of a slab of stone that is about the length of a man.

Their little motionless groups, posted as if on the watch, seem so little real in their vague whiteness that we feel tempted to verify them by touching, and, verily, we should not be astonished if our hand passed through them as through a ghost.