330 FROM NORTH POLE TO EQUATOR. 



is absent; and yet the desert mountains are not deficient in wealth 

 of colour, and certainly not in majesty. Every individual layer 

 and its own peculiar colour comes into prominence and has its effect. 

 And yet, brilliant as may be the brightly-coloured and sometimes 

 sharply-contrasted strata, it is on the continuously sand-polished, 

 grandly-sculptured cones, peaks, gullies, and gorges that the light 

 of heaven produces the finest play of colour. The alternations of 

 light and shade are so frequent, the flushing and fading of colours 

 so continuous, that a very intoxication of delight besets the soul. 

 Nor do the first and last rays of the sun fail to clothe the desert 

 mountains in purple; and distance sheds over them its blue ethereal 

 haze. They, too, live, for the light gives them life. 



In other regions the desert is for wide stretches either flat or 

 gently undulating. For miles it is covered with fine-grained, 

 golden-yellow sand, into which man and beast sink for several 

 centimetres. Here one often sees not a single stem of grass nor 

 living creature of any kind. The uniformly blue sky roofs in this 

 golden surface, and contributes not a little to suggest the sea. In 

 such places the track of the " ship of the desert " is lost as it is 

 made; they are pathless as the sea; for them as for the ocean was 

 the compass discovered. Less monotonous, but not more pleasant, 

 are those regions on which loose, earthy, or dusty sand forms a soil 

 for poisonous colocy nth -gourds and the wholesome senna. Long low 

 hills alternate with shallow and narrow hollows, and a carpet of the 

 above-named plants, which from a distance seems green and fresh, 

 covers both alike. Such places are avoided by both man and beast, 

 for the camel and his driver often sink a foot deep into the loose 

 surface-soil. Other tracts are covered with coarse gravel or flints, 

 and others with hollow sand-filled balls, rich in iron, which look 

 almost as if they had been made by human hands, and whose origin 

 has not yet been very satisfactorily explained. 75 On such stretches, 

 where the camel-paths are almost like definite highways, thousands 

 of quartz crystals are sometimes exposed, either singly or in groups, 

 like clusters of diamonds set by an artist hand. With these the 

 sun plays magically, and such stretches gleam and sparkle till the 

 dazzled eye is forced to turn away from them. In the deepest 



