Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 4.djvu/610

 weigh but a very few pounds; no vermin had touched it as in this whole desert there is neither worm, fly, nor any thing that has the breath of life.

ON the 21st, at six in the morning, having filled the girbas with water, we set out from Naibey, our direction due north, and, as we thought, in a course almost straight upon Syene. The first hour of our journey was through sharp-pointed rocks, which it was very easy to foresee would very soon finish our camels. About eight we had a view of the desert to the westward as before, and saw the sands had already begun to rise in immense twisted pillars, which darkened the heavens. The rising of these in the morning so early, we began now to observe, was a sure sign of a hot day, with a brisk wind at north; and that heat, and the early rising of the sands, was as sure a sign of its falling calm about mid-day, and its being followed by two hours of the poisonous wind. That last consideration was what made the greatest impression, for we had felt its effects; it had filled us with fear, and absorbed the last remnant of our strength; whereas the sand, though a destruction to us if it had involved us in its compass, had as yet done us no other harm than terrifying us the first days we had seen it.

IT was this day more magnificent than any we had as yet seen. The sun shining through the pillars, which were thicker, and contained more sand apparently than any of the preceding days, seemed to give those nearest us an appearance as if spotted with liars of gold. I do not think at any time they seemed to be nearer than two miles. The most remarkable circumstance was, that the sand seemed to keep in that vast circular space surrounded by the Nile