IN THE DESERT 



the African and Arabian desert, this grey landscape shows that it 

 is capable of the most impressive beauty before it sinks into darkness. 

 The sun sets in an indescribable miracle of colour. The clouds 

 darken to deep violet, surrounded with brick-red outlines, and then 

 grow brighter and brighter, until they are a light grass-green. The 

 sun disappears. But here we have nothing of the swift darkness 

 which is supposed to fall in the tropics ! Just as in Ceylon, in half 

 an hour's time it grows hght again. Now the horizon flings beams 

 of orange light into the blue-green heavens, that seem like a palpable 

 dome overhead, and little black clouds swim in the orange glow like 

 the spots on a leopard's hide. 



Shrill screams sound from high overhead, and we see the green 

 gleam of the parrots, returning to their distant roosting-places, 

 indefatigably chattering and calling to one another. Here come two 

 flying together, now nine, now ten. Now the last has flown overhead, 

 and as the glowing colours fade the moon rises, bathing the landscape 

 in a sharp white radiance, revealing it so plainly that one feels that 

 one could count the trees even on the distant hill-tops. 



Santa Luzia is the name of the little town from which I made my 

 excursions into the Sertao. A lonely stone-built city in the undulating 

 sea of rock, Santa Luzia climbs the ridge of a hill, on the summit 

 of which is a white church with twin towers. Going downhill, we 

 come to a river-bed, now filled with white sand in which the feet 

 sink, but in January it is a brown, roaring torrent, often of destructive 

 violence. 



A cotton-factory rises at one end of the town, and for three days 

 the seven of us were the guests of the manager. Beds were provided, 

 and hammocks hung, in a small empty house opposite the factory. 

 Here we slept; but I sat late on the verandah gazing at the little 

 town, glowing with electric light, and flooded with moonlight into 

 the bargain, while a kitten caught the little beetles which rattled 

 against the lamp and fell to the ground. 



I set out on my excursions in the cool of the early morning. As a 

 rule, the car having first taken me out into the Sertao, I continued 

 my explorations on foot, either alone or accompanied by a mulatto 

 who was well acquainted with the plant and animal life of the 

 wilderness. The prospect of the grey landscape, as seen from a height, 

 had always a peculiar beauty of its own. It was a picture in tender 

 tones, like a Japanese painting, but here and there, like bursts of 



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