weeks before and obtained a certain amount of
relief from doing so.
The desert, which on our southward march had
seemed to me so pretty, now possessed no beauty
whatever in my eyes. It appeared to be the most
arid and horrid waste in existence. I began to hate
the very sight of it.
As the day grew older the road became worse,
and we got on to a sandy patch covered with small
dunes which we found extremely fatiguing to traverse.
Our eyes smarted from the sand and glare, our
throats became too dry for speech, and all the
moisture seemed to have gone from our bodies.
We made a short halt in the middle of the day
to allow the camels to graze and rest—and then set
out again over the burning desert.
One of the younger camels began to show signs
of collapsing, and to display an inclination to lie
down, and we were compelled to shift a part of his
burden to another beast.
With the sun blazing down upon our backs and
our throats feeling as dry and rough as sand-paper,
we clambered up the soft sloping sides of one of
those wretched dunes after another and floundered
down again into the hollows beyond, only to be
compelled to plough along up to our ankles in soft
sand until we reached yet another dune when the
performance would be repeated. In our miserable
condition that journey seemed interminable.