DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4996#0017
NOON----THE MIRAGE.
9
But as the sun rose higher and higher into the cloudless sky, and
the blanched surface of the Desert glared under his fiery beams, and
the reflection from the glittering and heated waste dazzled the eye
and seemed to pierce to the very brain, it was another matter. The
camels now groan with distress ; the Arabs are silent, slipping from
time to time along-side the water-skins, and, with their mouths to
the orifice, catching a few gulps without stopping ; then, burying
their heads in the ample bemous, pace on again quietly—hour
after hour. The water, which smacks of the leathern bottle, or
Zemzemia, in which it is contained, warm, insipid, and even nause-
ous, seems but to increase the parching thirst; the brain is clouded
and paralysed by the intolerable sultriness ; and, with the eyes pro-
tected by a handkerchief from the reflected glare of the sand, and
swaying listlessly to and fro, I keep at the same horrible pace along
the burning; track.
" All-conquering heat, O intermit thy wrath !
And on my throbbing temples potent thus
Beam not so fierce ! Incessant still you flow,
And still another fervent flood succeeds,
Poured on the head profuse. In vain I sigh,
And restless turn, and look around for night:
Night is far off; and hotter hours approach !"
One would think that Thomson had penned these lines on the
back of a camel in the Desert. The hot film, like the low of a
kiln, now trembles over the glistening sands, and plays the most fan-
tastic tricks with the suffering traveller, cheating his vision with an
illusory supply of what his senses madly crave. Half-dozing, half-
dreaming, as I advanced, lulled into vague reverie, the startling
mirage, shifting with magic play, expands in gleaming blue lakes,
whose cool borders are adorned with waving groves, and on whose
shining banks the mimic waves, with wonderful illusion, break in
long glittering lines of transparent water—bright, fresh water, so
different from the leathery decoction of the Zemzemia. On our ap-
proach the vision recedes, dissolves, combines again into new forms,
all fancifully beautiful; then slowly fades, and leaves but the bum-
9
But as the sun rose higher and higher into the cloudless sky, and
the blanched surface of the Desert glared under his fiery beams, and
the reflection from the glittering and heated waste dazzled the eye
and seemed to pierce to the very brain, it was another matter. The
camels now groan with distress ; the Arabs are silent, slipping from
time to time along-side the water-skins, and, with their mouths to
the orifice, catching a few gulps without stopping ; then, burying
their heads in the ample bemous, pace on again quietly—hour
after hour. The water, which smacks of the leathern bottle, or
Zemzemia, in which it is contained, warm, insipid, and even nause-
ous, seems but to increase the parching thirst; the brain is clouded
and paralysed by the intolerable sultriness ; and, with the eyes pro-
tected by a handkerchief from the reflected glare of the sand, and
swaying listlessly to and fro, I keep at the same horrible pace along
the burning; track.
" All-conquering heat, O intermit thy wrath !
And on my throbbing temples potent thus
Beam not so fierce ! Incessant still you flow,
And still another fervent flood succeeds,
Poured on the head profuse. In vain I sigh,
And restless turn, and look around for night:
Night is far off; and hotter hours approach !"
One would think that Thomson had penned these lines on the
back of a camel in the Desert. The hot film, like the low of a
kiln, now trembles over the glistening sands, and plays the most fan-
tastic tricks with the suffering traveller, cheating his vision with an
illusory supply of what his senses madly crave. Half-dozing, half-
dreaming, as I advanced, lulled into vague reverie, the startling
mirage, shifting with magic play, expands in gleaming blue lakes,
whose cool borders are adorned with waving groves, and on whose
shining banks the mimic waves, with wonderful illusion, break in
long glittering lines of transparent water—bright, fresh water, so
different from the leathery decoction of the Zemzemia. On our ap-
proach the vision recedes, dissolves, combines again into new forms,
all fancifully beautiful; then slowly fades, and leaves but the bum-