238 LODGES IN THE WILDERNESS 

 and children included. These people were all 

 of the same colour, light yellow; they even 

 seemed to shew signs of type-inception. 

 Lean, sinewy and tough, they were not beauti- 

 ful either in form or feature. In neither sex 

 did the sallow skin give any hint of blood 

 beneath. However, anaemic as they were, 

 whatever fluid circulated in their arteries must 

 have been of good quality, for their capacity 

 for physical endurance was considerable. 



It was the eyes of those half-breeds that 

 were most distinctive. These were dusky and 

 deep, with an expression — not exactly furtive j 

 rather expressive of haunting apprehension. 

 This was hardly to be wondered at, for they 

 had ceaselessly to watch for every change in 

 the desert's pitiless visage — to note each 

 alteration in the moods of earth and sky. 

 Their lives were spent in answering a succes- 

 sion of riddles propounded by the terrible 

 sphinx between whose taloned paws they ex- 

 isted as playthings. 



Their dwellings — ordinary mat-houses and 

 ramshackle wagons — as well as the furniture 

 thereof, indicated that they must have become 

 habituated to extremes of heat and cold. 

 They were cleanly in their persons; this I 

 knew through having vaccinated them all, — 



