Page:Awful phenomena of nature -- snow storms, third of March and twenty-third April, 1827.pdf/15

 the lee of our beasts, who were themselves so terrified as to need fastening by the knees, and ttered in their wailings but a melancholy symphony.

I know not whether it was the novelty of the situation that gave it additional horrors, or whether the habit of magnifying evils to which we are unaccustomed, had increased its effect; but certain it is, that fifty gales of wind at sea appeared to me to be more easy encountered than one amongst those sands. It is impossible to imagine desolation more complete; we could see neither sun, earth, nor sky; the plain at ten paces distance was absolutely imperceptible; our beasts, as well as ourselves, were so covered as to render breathing difficult; they hid their faces in the ground, and we could only uncover our own for a moment, to behold this chaos of mid-day darkness, and wait impatiently for its abatement. Alexander’s journey to the temple of Jupiter Ammon, and the destruction of the Persian armies of Cambyses in the Lybian desart, rose to recollection with new impressions, made by the horror of the scene before me; while Addison’s admirable lines, which I also remembered with peculiar force on this occasion, seemed to possess as much truth as beauty.

"Lo! where o’er wide Numidian wastes extend,

Sudden the impetuous hurricanes descend,

Which through the air in circling eddies play,