Page:In bad company and other stories.djvu/459

 kept, and more likely 'to come again' after exceptional fatigue. But I know from experience that the Australian horse in every class, from the Shetland pony to the Shire, is the strongest, most active, and most enduring animal that the world can show. And I hesitate in the assertion that by any other horse can he be profitably superseded.

As one traverses the arid waste, from time to time a whirlwind starts up within sight; a sand-pillar raises itself, contrasting strangely with the clear blue ether. Darkly smoke-coloured, furiously plunging about the base, it gradually fines off into the upper sky if you follow it sufficiently long.

'People doubt,' said the Eastern traveller to his guide, 'what produces those sand-pillars which so suddenly appear before us.'

'There is no doubt about the matter, praise be to Allah!' quoth the Bedouin. 'It is perfectly well known, say our holy men, that they are (Djinns) evil spirits.'

Is it so? and do they come to dance exultingly amid the stricken waste, over ruined hopes, dying herds and flocks—to mock at the vain adventurer who deemed that he could alter natural conditions and wrest fame and fortune from the ungenial wilds? Who may tell? They can scarcely afford a good omen. The unimaginative boundary-rider regards them as a 'sign of a dry season.' More likely, one would say, they are its result. In a long-continued drought the production of dust must needs be favourable to the action of whirlwinds.

The oppressiveness of the summer is more felt in March, perhaps, than in any other month of the year. The hot weather has tired out the bodily power of resistance. One yearns and pines for a change; if it comes not, an intolerable weariness, a painful languor, renders life for all not in robust health hard indeed to bear. Gradually relief arrives in the added length and coolness of the nights. Rain does not come, but the mosquitoes disappear. The dawn is almost chilly; the system is refreshed and invigorated. With the first heavy fall of rain a decided change of temperature takes place. In those happier sections of the continent, where this is the first cool month, the weather is all that can be wished. 'Ces jours cristals d'automne,' so much beloved by Madame de Sevigne at Petits Rochets, are reproduced. The friendly