Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/198

 CHAPTER XIV

OLYMPUS AND THE SONS OF THE PROPHET

HE next day at sunrise, the hour of the matinal prayer, there drew up before the door of our hotel the car that was to carry us westward to the sea through unknown scenes and country that beckoned us on with a luring hand. All the way to the first affluent of the Sbu River we ran through a well-tilled agricultural country, with the exception of a single stretch of stony desert, where we found little life save locusts and scorpions. Of these latter we identified two varieties, the first great, black fellows with yellow legs and small pincers, Androctonus bicolor, and the second, smaller, yellow-colored ones, Buthus occitanicus.

After having crossed this dreary desert, which Zofiette named "The Hopeless Plain," we began ascending again into high ranges of hills till we reached once more the fertile fields and vineyards. As we climbed, we saw to the left of the road something that resembled a group of ruined walls but that turned out to be only pinkish-gray rocks, all notched and broken. The hunter's instinct whispered subconsciously that among these heaps of stone and weather-cleft rocks jackals might be hiding—an instinct that proved itself quite correct, for, as our car