Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/217

 

THE GREAT AND TERRIBLE WILDERNESS.

Our marches bring great changes in a single day. Only this morning we said good-bye to the red granite, and this afternoon we take leave of the old red sandstone. It may seem a welcome change to turn our backs on a wilderness of rocky defiles. But one who has been riding for days through these wild passes, observing the fantastic forms of the cliffs and crags on either side, and their infinite variety of color, cannot without a regret turn away from these dark, sombre mountains. And to come down from all this to the desert, is a change which involves a double descent, a descent from the mountain to the plain, and from the richest colors to the perpetual glare of the naked limestone! It is a change from boundless variety to boundless monotony.

But there are always compensations in nature, by which she relieves her bleakest and most barren wastes. Scarcely had we descended into the plain which separates the great mountain region of the Peninsula from the Desert of the Wandering, before we observed new grasses and flowers peering up in the sand. A new geological formation had brought a new vegetation, and Dr. Post found fresh specimens for his collection of the Flora of the Desert. Monotonous and tiresome as it was, as we kept on our weary march all the afternoon, yet as the wide plain opened a view to the west, we saw the sun setting over the Egyptian mountains on the other side of the Red Sea. Meanwhile