e by little one's mind grows drowsy, lulled by the monotony of the
slow, swinging movement of the tall, indefatigable camel. In the
foreground of the grey scene, one's sleepy, lowered eyes see at last
nothing but the continual undulation of its neck, of the same
grey-yellow as the sand, and the back of its shaggy head, similar to the
little head of a lion, encircled with a barbaric ornament of white
shells and blue pearls, with hangings of black wool.

As we go on, the last signs of life disappear. There is not a bird, not
an insect; even the flies which exist in all the lands of the earth are
not found. While the deserts of the sea contain vital wealth in
profusion, here are sterility and death. Yet one is intoxicated with
the stillness and lifelessness of it all, and the air is pure and
virginal, blowing from the world before the creation.

The wind drops, and in an atmosphere of an absolute purity the sun
mounts and burns with a white fire. Under the dazzling light, one shuts
one's eyes in spite of oneself for long periods. When one opens them,
the horizon seems a black circle breaking on the brightness of the
heavens, while the precise spot in which one is remains astonishingly
white. Nothing sings, nothing flies, nothing stirs. The immense silence
is dully broken only by the incessant, monotonous tread of our slow,
swinging camels.

On the fourth day we leave the plain and strike into the mountainous
solitudes of the Sinai peninsula.... As we ascend, vast new tracts are
unrolled on all sides beneath our eyes, and the impression of the desert
becomes more distressing by reason of this visible affirmation of its
illimitableness. It is terrifying in its magnificence! The limpidity of
the air gives an extraordinary depth to the perspectives, and in the
clear and far-receding distances the chains of mountains are interlaced
and overlaid in regular forms which, from the beginning of the world,
have been untouched by the hand of man, and with hard, dry contours
which no vegetation has ever softened or changed. In the foreground they
are of a reddish brown; then in their flight to the sky-line they pass
into a wonderful tone of violet, which grows bluer and bluer until it
melts into the pure indigo of the extreme distance. And all this is
empty, silent, and dead. It is the splendour of an invariable region,
from which is absent the ephemeral beauty of forest, verdure, or
herbage; the splendour of eternal matter, affranch