18 STEPPES AND DESERTS. 



to the earth, the sand rises through the rarified air 

 in the electrically charged centre of the whirling current; 

 resembling the loud waterspout dreaded by the experienced 

 mariner. The lowering sky sheds a dim, almost straw- 

 coloured light on the desolate plain. The horizon draws 

 suddenly nearer ; the Steppe seems to contract, and with it 

 the heart of the wanderer. The hot dusty particles which 

 fill the air increase its suffocating heat, ( 35 ) and the east 

 wind, blowing over the long-heated soil, brings with it no 

 refreshment, but rather a still more burning glow. The 

 pools which the yellow fading branches of the fan palm had 

 protected from evaporation now gradually disappear. As in 

 the icy north the animals become torpid with cold, so here, 

 under the influence of the parching drought, the crocodile 

 and the boa become motionless and fall asleep, deeply buried 

 in the dry mud. Every where the death-threatening drought 

 prevails, and yet, by the play of the refracted rays of light 

 producing the phenomenon of the mirage, the thirsty traveller 

 is every where pursued by the illusive image of a cool 

 rippling watery mirror. ( 36 ) The distant palm bush ap- 

 parently raised by the influence of the contact of un- 

 equally heated and therefore unequally dense strata of air, 

 hovers above the ground, from which it is separated by a 

 narrow intervening margin. Half concealed by the dark 

 clouds of dust, restless with the pain of thirst and hunger, 

 the horses and cattle roam around, the cattle lowing dis- 

 mally, and the horses stretching out their long necks and 

 snuffing the wind, if haply a moister current may betray the 

 neighbourhood of a not wholly dried up pool. More saga- 



