386 TRAVEL, ADVENTURE, AND SPORT. 



and everything belonging to us covered with a fine 

 impalpable dust of a reddish colour. There is no 

 sand of this colour in any of these deserts ; so the 

 opinion was that the dust-laden cloud was a traveller 

 straight from the Egyptian desert. As the darkness 

 fled, a dull-red, luminous glare, the most awe-inspir- 

 ing part of the storm, I thought, succeeded, and 

 steeped all surrounding objects. A hum from the 

 bazaars suddenly arose, and soon swelled into a 

 loud prolonged shout, in which it seemed that every 

 breathing soul in the town that had a voice took re- 

 joicing part. We saw no sun set that evening : the 

 sombre red glare that came streaming into the win- 

 dows, and bathing everything around, was gradually 

 lost in the darkness of night. By ten o'clock that 

 night, as we smoked our evening pipe in the open 

 verandah, we looked up at stars shining forth bright 

 and brilliant, but in vain did we look for any trace 

 of the evening's storm in the dark -blue vault of 

 heaven. 



For our visit to the Birs-^imrood we hired some 

 horses in the town. Our own poor beasts were in 

 want of a day's rest, and this we proposed giving 

 them before starting on our return-ride to Baghdad. 

 On the morning after the storm, we were threading our 

 way through narrow silent streets and covered -in 

 bazaars, shortly after break of day. All was silent 

 as the grave, and nothing moving but great wolfish- 

 looking dogs, who glared at us, showed us a long 



