LIFE IN THE DESERT. 181 the day I never suffered inconvenience from the heat, but up to 85° felt sufficiently cool. I seemed to absorb the rays of the sun, and as night came on and the temperature of the air fell, that of my skin rose, till at last I glowed through and through, like a live coal. It was a peculiar sensation, which I never experienced before, but was rather pleasant than otherwise. My face, however, which was alternately exposed to the heat radiated from the sand, and the keen morning wind, could not accommodate itself to so much contraction and expansion. The skin cracked and peeled off more than once, and I was obliged to rub it daily with butter. I mounted my dromedary with a " shining morning face," until, from alternate buttering and burning, it attained the hue and crispness of a well-basted partridge.

I soon fell into a regular daily routine of travel, which, during all my later experiences of the Desert, never became monotonous. I rose at dawn every morning, bathed my eyes with a handful of the precious water, and drank a cup of coffee. After the tent had been struck and the camels laden, I walked ahead for two hours, often so far in advance that I lost sight and hearing of the caravan. I found an unspeakable fascination in the sublime solitude of the Desert. I often beheld the sun rise, when, within the wide ring of the horizou, there was no other living creature to be seen. He came up like a god, in awful glory, and it would have been a natural act, had I cast myself upon the sand and worshipped him.

The sudden change in the coloring of the landscape, on his appearance— the lighting up of the dull sand into a warm golden hue, and the tintings of purple and violet on the distant porphyry hills— was a morning miracle, which I never beheld