CHAPTER X 



ON DESERTS 



What are deserts like ? — Camel-riding — Afterglow — Darwin in South 

 America — Big Bad Lands— Plants which train themselves to endure 

 thirst — Cactus and euphorbia— Curious shapes — Grey hairs — Ice-plant 

 — Esparto grass— Retama — Colocynth — Sudden flowering of the Karoo 

 — Short-lived flowers— Colorado Desert— Date palms on the Nile — 

 Irrigation in Egypt— The creaking Sakkieh — Alexandria hills — The 

 Nile and Euphrates. 



A CROSS the whole of Africa, at its very broadest part, 

 L\ from the dominions of the Emperor of the Sahara at 

 Cape Juby on the Atlantic, and to the very borders 

 of British India, stretches a desert of the most uncompro- 

 mising character. It is famous in history : the strongest 

 races of man, the great religions of the world, as well as 

 most cultivated plants and domestic animals, have originated 

 in some part of this dreary waste. 



One cannot really appreciate deserts unless one has really 

 seen them. But it is necessary to try to describe what they 

 are like. 



Sometimes the desert is a wilderness of broken, stony 

 hills covered by angular pieces of shivered rock. In other 

 places the soil is hard, and is everywhere covered by pebbles 

 or shingle. Often it is a mere waste of sand blown into 

 downs and hillocks which look sometimes like the sand dunes 

 by the coast, and elsewhere like the waves of the sea. 



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