Introductory 5 



hidden in cracks and crevices; even at Suez, on the ex- 

 posed, burnt-up face of the mountain Djebel Attakah, he 

 still found something, and in the northern part of the 

 Great Sahara, though vegetation was scanty, it was diffi- 

 cult to find many yards together that were actually bare. 



In fact, Mr. Ball had come to doubt the existence of 

 "deserts" altogether by the time he reached the "rainless 

 zone" of Peru, and was once more told that he would 

 find no vegetation at all. Certainly this was more barren 

 than any part of the world which he had yet seen, except 

 indeed the drifting sands above Cairo; yet even here there 

 were plants, stunted bushes in the gullies, and tiny vege- 

 tables in the depressions where the scanty rain rests 

 longest; but they wanted looking for, as there was 

 scarcely one so much as three inches high. The laborers 

 had done their best; they had prepared the soil, and they 

 had sown, but they had been hindered from growing any- 

 thing like a luxuriant crop by want of water. And at 

 one place, Tocopilla, they had been entirely baffled; for 

 here at last Mr. Ball found his desert — an altogether 

 barren spot, where not a single green thing was to be seen, 

 and not so much as a lichen was to be discovered, even 

 with the help of a microscope. 



But this is quite an exceptional state of things, due to 

 the extreme rarity of the rain; and such utterly barren 

 surfaces are not only very few, but very small, compared 

 with the whole extent of the farm — mere spots, in fact, 

 in the midst of generally luxuriant crops. 



In most cases the so-called deserts are deserts only for 

 want of water; the soil has been carefully made ready, 

 and in the Great Sahara and the deserts of Egypt it is 

 extremely rich, though at present covered with sand. 



