DESERT JOURNEYS. 333 



pearance in captivity, cooped up in a narrow space. What activity, 

 adroitness, suppleness, grace, and spirit, it displays in its native 

 haunts! How well it deserves to have been chosen alike by the 

 Oriental and by the native of the desert as the image of feminine 

 beauty. Trusting to its tawny coat, as well as to its incomparable 

 agility and speed, it gazes with clear, untroubled eyes at the camels 

 and their riders. Without seeming to be disturbed by the ap- 

 proaching caravan, it continues to browse. From the blossoming 

 mimosa it takes a bud or a juicy shoot; between the sharp alfa 

 leaves it finds a delicate young stem. Nearer and nearer comes the 

 caravan. The creature raises its head, listens, sniifs the air, gazes 

 round again, moves a few steps, and browses as before. But sud- 

 denly the elastic hoofs strike the ground, and the gazelle is off, 

 quickly, lightly, and nimbly, as if its almost unexcelled speed were 

 but play. Over the sandy plain it skims, quick as thought, leaping 

 over the larger stones and tamarisk bushes as if it had wings. It 

 seems almost to have left the earth, so surprisingly beautiful is its 

 flight ; it seems as if a poem of the desert were embodied in it, so 

 fascinating is its beauty and swiftness. A few minutes of per- 

 sistent flight carry it out of reach of any danger with which the 

 travellers can threaten it, for the best trotter would pursue in vain, 

 and not even a greyhound could overtake it. Soon it slackens its 

 speed, and in a few moments it is browsing as before. And if the 

 bloodthirsty traveller begins the chase in earnest, the sly creature 

 has a tantalizing way of allowing him to get near it again ; a second 

 and a third time it cleverly gets out of range of his murderous 

 weapons, until at length, becoming scared, it leaves all danger far 

 behind. The further it gallops the more slender seem its body 

 and limbs; its outline begins to swim before the eyes; at length it 

 disappears on the sandy flat, merging into it and seeming to melt 

 away like a breath of vapour. Its home has received and con- 

 cealed the fugitive, removed it, as if magically, from vision, and 

 left not a trace behind. But if the vision is lost to the eye it 

 remains in the heart, and even the Western can now understand 

 why the gazelle has become such a richly-flowering bud in the 

 poesy of the East, why the Oriental gives it so high a rank among 



