THE SEA AND THE DESERT. 
189 
The wind was not a Sirocco or Simoon, such as we 
associate with the desert, but a New England north¬ 
easter, — and we sought shelter in vain under the sand¬ 
hills, for it blew all about them, rounding them into 
cones, and was sure to find us out on whichever side 
we sat. From time to time we lay down and drank 
at little pools in the sand, filled with pure fresh water, 
all that was left, probably, of a pond or swamp. The 
air was filled with dust like snow, and cutting sand 
which made the face tingle, and we saw what it must 
be to face it when the weather was drier, and, if possi¬ 
ble, windier still, — to face a migrating sand-bar in the 
air, which has picked up its duds and is off, — to be 
whipped with a cat, not o’ nine-tails, but of a myriad 
of tails, and each one a sting to it. A Mr. Whitman, 
a former minister of Wellfleet, used to write to his in¬ 
land friends that the blowing sand scratched the win¬ 
dows so that he was obliged to have one new pane set 
every week, that he might see out. 
On the edge of the shrubby woods the sand had the 
appearance of an inundation which was overwhelming 
them, terminating in an abrupt bank many feet higher 
than the surface on which they stood, and having par¬ 
tially buried the outside trees. The moving sand-hills 
of England, called Dunes or Downs, to which these have 
been likened, are either formed of sand cast up by the 
sea, or of sand taken from the land itself in the first 
place by the wind, and driven still farther inward. It 
is here a tide of sand impelled by waves and wind, 
slowly flowing from the sea toward the town. The 
northeast winds are said to be the strongest, but the 
northwest to move most sand, because they are the 
driest. On the shore of the Bay of Biscay many vil- 
