GEOLOGY. 675 



numbers among her chosen men of eminence ; Captain Tui- 

 fort, who commanded the advanced guard in the expedition 

 to the sources of the Nile, which we had just rejoined, and 

 my sons, Georges and James Pouchet : the one natural- 

 ist to the expedition, the other an engineer on the Suez 

 Canal. There, each evening, plunged in melanholy medita- 

 tion, and tranquilly reclining on the ancient balustrade of 

 the building, I watched the setting of the sun as it sank be- 

 hind rocks as black as ebony ; and there also, having slept 

 under the open sky, I rose so soon as the first gleams of day 

 began to disperse the night, in order to seat myself upon 

 the lofty parapet of the great gate-tower, in order to enjoy 

 the indescribable spectacle of the dawn. 



The setting of the sun is each day the same uniform 

 spectacle. Rolling through a sky of which its rays have 

 absorbed all the vapors, it plunges into the sea of sand like 

 an immense globe of fire hung in a burning horizon. After 

 its disappearance, the blazing luminary only leaves a fiery 

 hue, which extends over an immense portion of the distant 

 plain. If at this time a caravan happen to pass the desert 

 on the west of us, the men and camels are clearly defined 

 against the reddish tint of the sky, like so many animated 

 silhouettes of an intense blackness ; they might be taken 

 for some of the well-known Chinese shadows. Then all at 

 once the night comes on, for the twilight in these burning 

 zones is only of short duration. 



The dawn, on the contrary, is infinitely varied, and pre- 

 sents by turns the most majestic spectacle one can imagine. 

 The freshness of night has condensed all the vapors on the 

 surface of the desert, and the lamp of day which lights us 



