Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 38.djvu/845

Rh the gulf. This wind is a cool one, but it occasionally veers around to the south and becomes oppressively hot. In April and May this south wind, called khamsîn, blows unremittingly for days together, scorching the traveler's skin and filling the orifices in his head with a very fine dry dust. Khamsîn is from an Arabic word meaning fifty, so called from a mistaken notion that it blows for a period of fifty days before the summer solstice.

In the Nile Valley, north winds prevail during the heated period of eight months, and southern winds during the rest of the year; these being in the opposite direction from the winds in the region of the Red Sea.

I witnessed three characteristic sand-storms at localities far apart and under varied circumstances. On February 15th, when riding a donkey through Thebes Nileward, a powerful west wind arose in the afternoon, blowing before it fine dust from the Libyan Desert. Words fail to describe the discomfort of such a sandstorm; the fine dust seems able to penetrate everything except perhaps an unbroken egg, and it is quite impossible to escape from it; to prevent suffocation, I borrowed from a fellah a coarse yet closely woven blue outer garment and wrapped my head up. Donkeys did not seem to enjoy the phenomenon any better than the Bedouins, and they shrank from its blast as well as the travelers. After crossing to Luxor in a boat, we found the residents in the large hotel much inconvenienced by the penetrating dust, although the building is screened by a handsome garden.

My second experience was in Cairo itself. On March 6th a northwest, and consequently a cool, wind blew dust from the adjoining desert into the city with such power as to obscure the usually brilliant sun during an entire day. Residents of Cairo said that the sand-storm was the severest in twenty-five years, and of an unusual character—being accompanied by a low temperature instead of the scorching khamsîn.

I experienced a third sand-storm in the desert of Sinai, on the plain of El Markha; it was accompanied by a scorching south wind, and the drying effects on the skin and the capital orifices produced greater discomfort than the suffocating dust and cutting sand; my party could do nothing but sit in silence on our camels, facing the storm, and the poor animals forgot to snatch at the tufts of scanty shrubs, as is their custom. In the evening the fierce wind very nearly overturned our tents in spite of extra stays, and at dinner every course was seasoned with the all-penetrating dust. The temperature at 7 was abnormally high, 84°; just twenty-four hours later it fell to 58°, the wind having meanwhile veered around to the north, bringing with it heavy mists.