DRY GRASS BLOWN AWAY BY WIND. 79 



a recent speech upon "The Study of War," made 

 before a military society lately established in Ireland 

 "the physical features of the world that have most 

 influenced the history of man"* and though this 

 axiom may be accepted as applicable to every part of 

 the earth's surface, of course it is peculiarly so in these 

 dry regions to which these observations refer for 

 during the long rainless season the greater part of 

 this country becomes, in the strictest sense of the word, 

 an utterly barren desert, where neither man nor beast 

 can find subsistence, as the extreme heat of the sun, 

 the utter drought, and the scorching breath of the 

 simoon, causes all vegetation to shrivel up and appar- 

 ently entirely to perish; so that ultimately the dried 

 grass breaks in the wind, and is carried away in dust, 

 leaving the earth utterly naked and bare. The desert 

 is then the desert indeed : yet on the return of 

 the "kharif" or rainy season, as the same authority 

 observes "the whole of this country is covered with 

 excellent pasturage, and far from resembling a desert 

 becomes a mass of bright green herbage." f 



The most striking feature of these sun-stricken regions, 

 as we have already observed, is the refreshing coolness 

 and beauty of the nights; which have been made the 

 subject of remark by all travellers who have visited 

 these parts of the world. We cannot do better than 

 again refer to the pages of Sir Samuel Baker, in 

 illustration of it 



"I much prefer," he says, "the intense heat of summer to 

 the damp of the rainy season, which breeds all kinds of 



* Speech of General (now Field Marshal and Commander-in-Chief) Lord 



Wolseley in Dublin, reported in Article of U.S. Magazine for March 1891. 



j- Sir Samuel Baker, The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia, 1867, p. 61. 



