360 MOVING PILLARS OF SAND. 



a steep pass through a range of hills, where the heat 

 is intense and the sand deep, the route is a mass of 

 bones, every weak animal giving in at this trying place. * 

 We give these details, we need hardly say, in illus- 

 tration of the difficulties and dangers of desert marches. 

 Thirst and fatigue, however, in all these cases have 

 been the cause of this frightful mortality, and so far 

 as we have been able to discover there is no recorded 

 instance, where the losses have been known to occur 

 from rnen or animals being overwhelmed by a sand 

 storm. In the surveying expedition for the Soudan 

 railway some of the tents were occasionally upset by 

 moving pillars of sand, but that was all. f Men 

 have, however, constantly been known to get separated 

 from their companions, and lost during the profound 

 darkness which is occasioned by the dense clouds of 

 dust which these storms create, and, if they lose their 

 presence of mind, may wander away, in their hopeless 

 endeavours to rejoin their companions, so that it may 

 become difficult, or even impossible, to find them again: 

 the noise of the tempest effectually preventing shouts, 

 etc. being audible. General Daumas records one such 

 case, where the man, an Arab, was lost in the midst of 

 an immense waterless sand plain ; he was unfortunately 

 not missed until the evening halt, and was of course 

 unable to pick up the trail of his caravan, which was 

 effaced as soon as made ; and though the caravan halted 

 the whole of the following day, and parties of mounted 

 Arabs started in different directions in hopes of finding 

 him, he was never heard of again ; the caravan being of 



* The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia, by Sir Samuel Baker, 1867, 

 pp. 14, 15. 



f Desert Life, by B. Solymos, 1880, p. 16. 



