74 ASPECTS OF TROPICAL NATURE 



perature of 102°. When the khamsin was most violent, Eus- 

 segger was obliged to sit down and bury his face in his mantle, 

 his breast heaving with oppression, his brain reeling as if he 

 were intoxicated. The indescribably grand phenomenon ter- 

 minated with floods of rain, which at first literally showered 

 down torrents of liquid mud. 



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

 spouts, the terror of the mariner, who sees them approach in 

 rapid whirls ; so also sand-spouts, or trombs, arise in rotatory 

 eddies from the midst of the desert, menacing with instant 

 destruction all living things that come in their way. "At 

 eleven o'clock," says Mr. Bruce, " while we contemplated with 

 great pleasure the rugged top of Chig^re, to which we were 

 fast approaching, and where we were to solace ourselves with 

 plenty of good water, Idris our guide cried out with a loud 

 voice, ' Fall upon your faces, for here is the simoom ! ' I saw 

 from the south-east a haze come, in colour like the purple part 

 of the rainbow, but not so compressed or thick. It did not 

 occupy twenty yards in breadth, and was about twelve feet high 

 from the ground. It was a kind of blush upon the air, and it 

 moved very rapidly ; for I scarce could turn to fall upon the 

 ground with my head to the northward, when I felt the heat of 

 its current plainly upon my face. We all lay flat on the ground, 

 as if dead, till Idris told us it was blown over. The meteor, or 

 purple haze, which I saw was indeed past, but the light air 

 which still blew was of heat to threaten suffocation. For my 

 part, I found distinctly in my breast that I had imbibed a part 

 of it ; nor was I free of an asthmatic sensation till I had been 

 some months in Italy at the baths of Poretta, near two years 

 afterwards." 



In this case the severity of the blast seems to have past 

 almost instantaneously; yet the hot wind continued to blow 

 about six hours longer with gradually decreasing violence, so 

 as to leave the traveller in a state of depression such jxs is 

 occasioned, though in a far less degree, by the blowing of the 

 sirocco. 



When we consider the scanty vegetation of the Sahara, we 

 cannot wonder that animal life is but sparingly scattered over 

 it. The lion, whom our poets so frequently name the " kini^- 



