Page:The lives of celebrated travellers (Volume 2).djvu/36

 *cording to Niebuhr, is Yemen much less liable to them. But in the neighbourhood of Mount Sinai there is usually one uniform course of weather throughout the year, the winds blowing briskly during the day, and decreasing with the decrease of light. In the level parts of the desert, where the plain was as unbroken as a calm sea, our traveller observed that curious phenomenon called the mirage, or mimic lake, every object within the circumference of which appeared to be magnified in an extraordinary manner, so that a shrub might be taken for a tree, and a flock of birds for a caravan of camels. This seeming collection of waters always advanced about a quarter of a mile before the observers, while the intermediate space was one continued glow, occasioned by the quivering undulating motion of that quick succession of vapours and exhalations which were extracted from the earth by the powerful influence of the sun. The few real springs of water which occurred on the road were all of them either brackish or sulphureous; yet the water they afford is so extremely wholesome, and so provocative of appetite, that few persons are ever afflicted with sickness in traversing these wild inhospitable scenes.

Among the curiosities which are scattered by the liberal hand of nature even over these deserts may be enumerated certain beautiful flints and pebbles, which are superior to Florentine marble, and, in many instances, equal to the Mokha stone, in the variety of their figures and representations. Locusts, hornets, and vipers were numerous; and the lizards seem to have considerably amused the loitering members of the caravan by their active movements and spotted skins. Of birds the only ones seen by Shaw were the percnopterus and the dove, as the graceful and beautiful antelope was the only animal; but the ostrich, which he seems to consider neither a bird nor a beast, is the grand ranger, says he, and ubiquitarian of the deserts, from the Atlantic