136 A TERRIBLE PHENOMENON. 



ever it blows, it is a pernicious and hateful wind ; the blast, in all 

 probability, which destroyed the hosts of Sennacherib at the bidding 

 of the Divine Word, 



" The angel of Death spread his wings on the blast, 

 And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed. 

 And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill, 

 And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still." 



Torrents of burning sand sweep before it, a thick veil of darkness 

 envelopes the firmament, and the sun assumes a blood-red hue. 



" That crimson haze 

 By which the prostrate caravan is awed 

 In the red desert when the wind's abroad."* 



When the Simoom rises, says M. Martins, f the air is filled with 

 dust of such extreme fineness that it makes its way through objects 

 hermetically sealed, penetrates into the eyes, the ears, and the organs 

 of respiration. A burning heat, like that which breathes from the 

 mouth of a furnace, possesses the air, and paralyzes the strength of 

 men and animals. Seated on the sand, with their backs turned to 

 windward, the Arabs, wrapped in their burnous, wait with fatalistic 

 resignation the end of the torment ; their camels crouching, 

 exhausted, panting, stretch their long necks upon the scorching soil. 

 Seen through this powdery haze, the sun's disc, shorn of its beams, 

 shows pale and ghastly as that of the moon. 



Fortunately, the phenomenon never prevails over any very con- 

 siderable area, and beyond its limits the atmosphere remains serene 

 and calm ; so that travellers who have watched it approaching in the 

 form of a reddish cloud, without being able to calculate on its direc- 

 tion, have often escaped with no worse result than a panic, and 

 have only witnessed its terrible effects at a distance. 



It must not, however, be confounded with the sand-storms which 



* Moore's " Poetical Works " Veiled Prophet of Khorassan. 

 f Martins, " Du Spitzberg au Sahara," p. 662. 



