Page:Harris Dickson--Old Reliable in Africa.djvu/170

 Gaunt from a million years of sun, the starveling creature falls prone at the river's brink. Yonder a knoll uprises; on the far horizon lies a reddish ridge.

Limitless spaces shimmer in the sun; space—nothing but space—desert spaces which, like eternity, have no beginning and no end. Beyond the imaginings of hasheesh dreams, run billowy waves of sand, leading to remoter red-brown purples. A half-buried temple stares out from its drift-piled tomb—stares through the glare and the heat and the silence.

In places a frazzled ribbon divides the water and the waste. This strip of arable Sudan is so narrow at times, that a date-palm, dabbling its feet in the water, casts its shadow into the irreclaimable desert. Here, perhaps, is a nile-wheel, a noggur's sail, a square yellow hut, or the white tomb of some religious devotee—and the pitiless sun. A monotone of river crawls across a ravenous land; vacancy, emptiness, a vastitude of sky and sand, and sunshine. Through the Sudan Zack and the Colonel passed from Wadi Haifa to Khartum.