NIGHT IN THE DESEKT. 285 



represent to ourselves the earth when she first emerged from the 

 boiling seas of Chaos, when the forces which had seethed within her 

 bowels for so many thousands of centuries had been tranquillized by 

 the Divine will, and she was despatched on her mysterious course to 

 be the theatre of man's glorious destiny. 



During the daytime silence and solitude prevail over the open 

 plains. It is the hour when most animals seek, under the foliage of 

 the trees, among the tall rank grasses, in the bosom of the waters or 

 under the surface of the earth, a shelter against the swift burning 

 arrows of the sun, and repose immovable in their different lairs. But 

 when the great orb of day sinks towards the horizon, all Nature seems 

 to awake. More imperious needs succeed to those of rest and slum- 

 ber ; hunger and thirst stimulate the most sluggish into exertion. 

 Then the reptile begins to stir in the mud where he lay embedded ; 

 the herbivora return to their fresh pastures, and move towards the 

 rivers and ponds in whose waters they may slake their thirst ; the 

 carnaria take the same road; they know that in the open plain they 

 will find victims for their murderous jaws. The Desert is astir 

 with strange sounds and mysterious voices ; the air re-echoes the 

 thousand discordant cries which ring from the mountains and the 

 rocks ; black shadows pass, re-pass, and flit to and fro, in every direc- 

 tion ; terror, rage, agony, voracity, all these instincts obtain expres- 

 sion in the dreadful concert ; it is the orgie of the appetites, the 

 grand " Witches' Sabbath" of Nature, whose furious animation slackens 

 towards the middle of the night, until, at sunrise, the lively accents 

 and joyous melodies of the birds, and the peaceful pastimes of the 

 other animals of the day, succeed to the lamentations and sinister in- 

 vocations of the prowlers of the darkness. 



In the foremost rank of the great animals to which the fauna 

 of Asia and Africa owes its superiority, I have named the huge 

 Pachyderms,* those mighty colossi which may be regarded as the ana- 



* Pachydermata, from Traxfo, thick, and S^p/ia. skin ; an order of quadrupeds distin- 

 guished by the thickness of their hides. 



