d crossway
of the desert, along which pass every year crowds of twenty or thirty
thousand men marching to the holy city of Mecca, is now empty,
infinitely empty, and the mournful, vacant grandeur which it wears under
the sombre sky is terrible. The habitual halting-place of multitudes, it
is strewn with tombstones, little rough, unhewn blocks, one at the head,
the other at the feet--places in which the pious pilgrims who passed by
have laid down to rest for eternity.

Our dromedaries, excited by the wide, open space in front of them, raise
their heads and scent the wind, and then change their languid gait into
something that becomes almost a race. It is of a mud-grey colour, this
desert that calls to them, and as even as a lawn. As far as the eye can
reach, no change is seen in it, and it is gloomy under a still gloomier
sky. It has almost the shimmer of something humid, but its immense
surface is all made of dry mud, broken and marked like crackled
porcelain.

The next day the colour of the wilderness changes from muddy grey to
deep black, and the sun soared up, white-hot, in a clear blue sky. The
empty, level distances trembled in the heat, and seemed to be preparing
for all sorts of visions and mirages.

"Gazal! Gazal!" (gazelles) cried the sheik. They were passing in an
opposite course to ours, like a whirl of sand, little creatures
slenderly fine, little creatures timid and quick in flight. But the
moving, troubled air altered their images and juggled them away from our
defeated eyes.

Then the first phantom lake appeared, and deceived even the Bedouin
chief--the water was so blue, and the shadows of a border of palm-trees
seemed to be reflected in it. And very soon the tempting waters show on
all sides, retreating before us, changing their shapes, spreading out,
going away, coming back; large lakes or winding rivers or little ponds
edged with imaginary reeds. Every minute they increase, and it seems
like a sea which little by little gains on us--a disquieting sea that
trembles. But at noon all this blue phantasmagoria vanishes abruptly, as
if it were blown away at a breath. There is nothing but dried sands.
Clear, real, implacable, reappears the land of thirst and death.

_Easter Sunday, March 25, 1894._ We were awakened this morning by the
singing of the larks. After travelling for three hours, look, here are
some trees--the first we have seen--a long valley full of trees; and
there, on the far sky-line, is