Page:The Boy Travellers in Australasia.djvu/461

Rh friend, and he cautioned us to get back to our hotel as soon as we could. We took his advice, and went there.

"In a little while there was a driving volume of dark clouds like a London fog; the wind increased almost to a gale, and then came the dust. It was not a fine, impalpable sand, like that brought to Cairo by the khamseen in April, but a perceptible and gritty dust that sifted into every crevice and cranny, blinded our eyes, filled our ears, and made its way inside our clothing, till we could feel that it was all over our skins.

Nothing is sacred to it, and it invades the most stately mansions as well as the humblest cottages. The air was filled with dust gathered up from the streets, in addition to what the wind brought from the interior; the dustiest and most disagreeable March day of New York was the perfection of mildness compared to it.

"Windows and doors were closed, and it is the rule to keep them so as long as a brickfielder lasts. The hot gale will make its way inside if it can find the least opening, and then the entire house and all its contents will be thickly sprinkled with dust. The heat was intolerable,