A GREAT LONE LAND. 63 



of the Euphrates a little south of Deir. It is in fact 

 often only by a thin black line of Arab tents stretching 

 across the plain that it is possible to follow the course 

 of the stream, which otherwise becomes indistinguish- 

 able at a very short distance. Where these wanderers 

 pitch their tents little plots of land will be ploughed and 

 clumsily irrigated, but away from the river-banks nothing 

 will meet the eye but waste — dreary, desolate waste. 



Often it is across an absolute level that one canters, 

 hoping against hope that some time that elusive horizon 

 in front will be reached ; again it is across great billowy 

 undulations that go rolling away into infinite space, 

 tempting one always to think that at any rate from the 

 crest of the next something definite will await one's 

 gaze. But the summit of the next is reached, and of 

 the one after that, and there is always just such 

 another beyond, unrelieved by anything but the meagre 

 grass and rusty scrub which, while redeeming it from 

 the utter destitution of the true desert, serves but to 

 accentuate the hideous forlornness of the whole sur- 

 rounding. And so one relapses into indifi'erence and 

 jogs wearily along, one's thoughts wandering absently 

 to other lands, since there is nothing in the present to 

 keep them, thankful when night, or some small isolated 

 police-station, or the squat black tents of some Arab 

 encampment, apprise one that the end of the day's 

 march is at hand. 



" Ah ! " The short sharp exclamation broke the deep 

 silence which Nature always preserves in those vast 

 solitudes of hers where space is infinite and time and 

 distance have no place. My wandering thoughts came 

 tumbling back, from a wild flight to distant lands, to the 

 reality of the present. Mohammed had pulled up, and 

 was standing like a statue gazing into vacancy. 

 " What is it ? " I inquired, as I pulled up alongside 



