458 THE MORNING AFTER THE STORM. 



is thus embalmed, like a Temple of the East. These little 

 scanty pale plants, which were perishing from drought, have 

 recovered life under the downpour of the night, and now 

 spread abroad their aromas like innumerable little bottles of 

 perfume : one imagines the air filled with benzoin, with 

 citronelle, with geranium, and myrrh. After a time I examine 

 the ground from which all these perfumes rise : it is covered 

 with white grains resembling hail stones after a storm. It 

 appears to be manna which the wind and the rains of the 

 night have brought with them. I collect these things; very 

 hard white grains, tasting like wheat, the dried fruit of this 

 dwarf prickly plant, which in certain places here have carpeted 

 the mountains. In gathering the manna I lightly rubbed 

 against these aromatics of the ground, and my hands for a 

 long while remained exquisitely scented." * 



In this picturesque description, we see the great 

 wilderness of Sinai strewed with honey like drops of 

 manna, and its atmosphere perfumed with the aromatic 

 incense of desert herbage; and we are reminded of 

 the words which of old were inscribed among the 

 Mosaic records of the Scriptures, describing just such 

 another scene, not far from the same spot. 



"And when the dew that lay was gone up, behold upon 

 the face of the Wilderness there lay a small round thing, 

 as small as the hoar frost, upon the ground."! 



" And the manna was as coriander seed, and the colour 

 thereof as the colour of bdellium." 



This species of manna exudes plentifully, during the 

 spring and summer months, from the branches of a 

 dwarf shrub, which is very plentiful in the deserts of 

 Sinai, known as the Manna Tamarisk (Tamarix Gallica 



* Le Desert, par Pierre Loti, de 1'Academie Franchise, 2nd Edit., 

 Paris, 1895, pp. 3335- 

 f Exodus xvi., 14. 

 Numbers xi., 7. 



