waves of a fiery sea; under a
sun that seems to grow ever larger and brighter as the tired eyes, sick
with beholding its yellow splendor overflowing all the world, yet turn
toward it their fascinated gaze, and faint into burning dryness at its
sight.

Away,--from the coolness of city walls, and the dark shadows of narrow,
high-built streets, where the sunlight comes only at the height of noon,
where men hide within doors as the hot hours draw nigh, and rest in
silent chambers, or drowse away the time with _tchibouque_ or
_narghileh_, whose softened odor of the rich Eastern tobacco floats up
through perfumed waters and tubes of aromatic woods to leisurely lips,
and curls in dim wreaths before restful eyelids half dropping to repose.

Away,--from the association of men in street, lane, bazaar, and
market-place. No very profitable or happy association for the poor
captives, one might think; and yet not so. For in every group of
bystanders, or bevy of passers, they perchance might see him who should
prove their angel of deliverance,--a kindly merchant, a new speculator,
or even, by some event of gracious fortune, a countryman or a friend.

Away,--from all that they had borne and hoped, and borne and seen and
suffered, into the desert whose paths lay invisible to them, mapped out
in the keen intellects of their guides and guards, who read the
streaming sand of Saaera as sailors read the wilds of sweeping seas, but
whose dusky faces, as inscrutable as the barren wastes, revealed no
trace of the secret of the path they led,--whether indeed the great
Moorish Empire were their destination, or whether they turned their
steps to some unknown and untried goal.

Away,--from the hum of business, from the gossip of idlers and the staid
speech of a city into the silence of the vast desolation wherein they
moved, the only reasoning, thinking beings it contained. Silence all
around, unbroken save by the smothered tread of the beasts in their
little train, the shouts of the drivers, the chattering of the
attendants, the rattling of harness and burdens, and the soft sough of
the sand as it sank back into the hot level from which the passing hoofs
had disturbed it.

Away, away,--and who shall attempt to paint the feelings of the captives
as their wanderings began again? It would need a brilliant pen to convey
the sensations with which the _voyageur_, eager for scenes of adventure
and fresh from the hived-up haunts of civilization, wou