AN INTERESTING COMPARISON. 261 



salt heaps, which they had hoped would have 

 served as a kind of shielding from the blinding 

 and choking sand. A few drops of rain, and some 

 distant claps of thunder, accompanied this phe- 

 nomenon. In a few minutes, the sky clearing, the 

 short silence of the camp gave way to a burst of 

 shouting and laughing, as the people chased the 

 retiring column, in pursuit of their flying mats and 

 ropes. I got out of my retreat, and saw moving 

 towards the west, an immense pillar of sand, 

 reaching from earth to heaven, in form and size 

 exactly like the huge water-spouts I have seen out 

 at sea, off the island of Ceylon. 



On asking Ohmed Medina respecting these sand 

 spouts, and whether they were common in Adal, 

 he told me, that sometimes twenty or thirty of 

 them, might be seen at once upon extensive plains 

 which admitted of their formation, and added, that 

 they were always accompanied by rain, and with the 

 sheet lightning in the horizon by night, and that these 

 signs, directed the Bedouins to situations, where 

 they would not fail to find water for their flocks. 

 This was a most interesting fact for me to learn, 

 evidently proving, as it does, that the goodness of 

 heaven was not especially devoted to the comfort and 

 happiness of the Israelites alone, as with some little 

 national vanity, and more ignorance of natural 

 phenomena, these people have ascribed the pre- 

 sence of the pillar of a cloud by day, and the 

 pillar of fire by night, to be, imagining them to 



