DESERT TRAVELLING. 455 



facility with which one can carry all that one wants, on 

 camels.* One travels, so to speak, with one's household 

 one has large and good tents, bed, easy chairs, cushions, 

 carpets and mats; library and wine cellar; abundant provisions ; 

 large and solid utensils. There is nothing to prevent having 

 them: as in towns, there are 7 or 8 dishes at each meal. 

 Water is brackish, but it is easy to carry ale, or to take a 

 female camel which is watered often and which furnishes 

 daily more milk than can be consumed by myself and 

 servants. Thus it is that in spite of all dangers and fatigues, 

 I am not yet disgusted with the desert, and my only desire 

 is to traverse it anew. On the desert one is as if at sea. 

 Like the sailor, the persistence of bad weather or calms may 

 make him swear occasionally, but hardly has he touched 

 land than he wants to go to sea again. One quickly tires 

 of the monotony of a town, but one never tires of the 

 monotony of the ocean, nor of the solitude of the desert." f 



Meanwhile as we take our leave of this great sub- 

 ject (as it appears to us) the scent of the aromatic 

 herbage seems to rise once more to the sense of smell 

 as if to remind us that we ought to pause one moment 

 to record the marvellous fragrance which pervades the 

 majority of these desert shrubs and plants. 



It is a special peculiarity of the vegetation generally 

 throughout these almost rainless regions of maximum 

 solar temperatures, that almost the whole of it is more 

 or less powerfully scented. Some of these scents are 

 of so exceedingly penetrating a nature, that they 

 become at times actually oppressive: for instance, in 

 Northern Arabia, there is a species of desert grass, so 



* The load of a good camel will be about 400 Ibs. of baggage, but 

 it is better if possible to confine it to 350 Ibs., if the journey is long 

 or the country broken. Arabs, however, often put loads of 500 to 600 

 Ibs. on powerful animals. 



f Le Desert et Le Soudan, par M. le Comte D'Escayrac deLauture, 

 Paris, 1843. p. 625. 



