ne of red angry upon that cloud
which had come to receive it, an endless line which suddenly called up
what one had heard old men say of the prairie fires.

It was easy, without covering the face and without abstracting the mind
from the whirl of modern circumstance, it was easy, merely looking at
the thing, to be seized with an impression of disaster. The stars were
so pale on the lingering white light of the pure north, the smoky cloud
so deep and heavy and steadfast and low above the hills, the fire so
near to it, so sharp against it, and so huge, that the awe and sinister
meaning of conflagrations dominated the impression of all the scene.
There arose in the mind that memory which associates such a glare and
the rising and falling fury of flames with sacrifice or with vengeance,
or with the warning of an enemy's approach, or with the mark of his
conquest; for with such things our race (for how many thousand years!)
has watched the fires upon the hills far off. It touched one as does the
reiterated note of a chaunt; if not with an impression of doom, at least
with that of calamity.

When the fires had died down to a sullen glow, and the men watching them
had gone home under the weight of what they had seen, the storm broke
and occupied the whole sky. A very low wind rose and a furious rain
fell. It became suddenly cold; there was thunder all over the weald, and
the lightning along the unseen crest of the downs answered the lightning
above the forest.

THE MAN OF THE DESERT

I lay once alone upon the crest of a range whose name I have never seen
spelt, but which is pronounced "Haueedja," from whence a man can see
right away for ever the expanse of the Sahara.

It is well known that Mount Atlas and those inhabited lands where there
is a sufficient rainfall and every evidence of man's activity, the
Province of Africa, the plateaux which are full of the memories of Rome,
end abruptly towards the sun, and are bounded by a sort of cliff which
falls sheer upon the desert. On the summit of this cliff I lay and
looked down upon the sand. It was impressed upon my mind that here was
an influence quite peculiar, not to be discovered in any other climate
of the world; that all Europe received that influence, and yet that no
one in Europe had accepted it save for his hurt.

God forbid that any man should pretend that the material environment of
mankind determines the destiny of mankind. Those who say such things
hav