142 THE MONGOLIAN SAND-SPOUTS. 



pale and troubled, the sun's light obscured, the boundaries of the 

 horizon seem to meet together ; the burning dust held in suspension 

 in the air renders it irrespirable, and if one of these whirlwinds 

 encounters any object which offers a resistance, it carries it upward 

 and hurls it a considerable distance. Fortunately the phenomenon is 

 one of brief duration. The atmospheric equilibrium is speedily 

 restored ; the heavens recover their serenity ; the atmosphere grows 

 clear, and the sand columns, falling in upon themselves, form a 

 number of little hills or cones, apparently constructed with great care, 

 like those mimic edifices of sand or snow built up by children in 

 their pastimes. 



It is said that these furious whirlwinds have occasionally 

 engulfed whole caravans in their tremendous vortex, 



" Man mounts on man, on camels camels rush, 

 Hosts march on hosts, and nations nations crush ; 

 Wheeling in air the winged islands fall, 

 And one great sandy ocean covers all." 



Whether this be true or not, there can be no doubt that the spectacle 

 is one of great magnificence, and calculated to inspire the traveller 

 with emotions of awe and dread. Mr. Atkinson describes it as seen 

 by him, on one occasion, when traversing the Mongolian Desert : 



"As we passed," he says,* "in the middle of a space sown with 

 innumerable hillocks of sands, we saw about thirty of them suddenly 

 raise themselves around us, lengthen into long elliptical columns, and 

 glide with many a whirl and sweep over the surface of the Desert 

 with the hissings and contortions of gigantic serpents which had 

 awakened at our approach. These spouts, for the phenomenon was 

 no other, varied in diameter ; the smallest measured between twenty 

 and thirty feet ; a few attained to a hundred ; and one, which 

 absorbed in its vortex all that it approached, rose to nearly two 

 hundred. One might have said, on seeing them bending, rising again 

 and crossing one another in space amidst an atmosphere of dust, that 

 they were antediluvian monsters emerging from their geological bed. 

 * T. W. Atkinson, " Travels on the Eusso-Chinese Frontiers." 



