THE BEAUTIES OF THE SAHARA. 97 



liquors only excite disgust. There is a keen enjoyment in a 

 mere animal existence. The vigorous appetite disposes of the 

 most indigestible food ; the sand is softer than a bed of down, 

 and the purity of the air suddenly puts to flight a dire cohort 

 of diseases. Hence it is that both sexes and every age, the 

 most material as well as the most imaginative of minds, all 

 feel their hearts dilate and their pulses beat strong, as they 

 look down from their dromedaries upon the glorious desert. 



Nothing can equal the beauty of the night in these arid 

 wilds, doubly grateful after the heat and glare of the day. We, 

 the sons of a colder clime, accustomed to see the starry 

 firmament faintly glimmering through a misty haze, can have 

 no idea of the magnificence of its luminous worlds brightly spark- 

 ling through an atmosphere of incomparable clearness. Grazing 

 at these isles of light the soul rises on the wings of adoration 

 to Him who made them. The desert is the image of the 

 Infinite ; no place is more apt to awaken religious feelings, and 

 no time is fitter for devotion than its still and solitary night. 

 He, who, in the desert does not hear the voice of Grod, knows 

 not the Almighty, and ranks far below the wandering Arab, who, 

 after the toil of the sultry day, reverentially bows down his 

 forehead in prayer over the sand of the desert. Falling on his 

 knees he exclaims : ' Allah hu akbar ! Grod is greater : ' greater 

 than all created things, which only bear witness to His great- 

 ness. 



But it is not alone the sublime grandeur of the desert which 

 raises the spirit of man to his Maker ; its terrors also make 

 him vividly feel the Almighty presence, for when the sense of 

 his helplessness becomes overpoweringly acute, he then in- 

 stinctively looks for protection above. 



As the conflicting air-currents of the ocean occasion water- 

 spouts, the terror of the mariner ; so also sandspouts or trombs 

 arise in rotatory eddies from the midst of the desert, and 

 assume the form of mighty columns, sometimes slowly moving 

 along, at others advancing with menacing swiftness. 



As they rapidly scud with the wings of the whirlwind over 

 the plain — huge, yellow shafts with lofty heads horizontally 

 bent backwards in the form of clouds, it requires but little 

 stretch of fancy to enter into the Bedouin's superstition, and, 

 like the imaginative sons of the desert, suppose them^ to be the 



H 



