ABSTRACT
THE landscape changed, and we travelled through I desolate, dead, stone steppe between belts of undulating clay-sand. The ground was covered with a white powdering of salt, and long ridges of loose sand formed obstacles across our way. Signs of organic life were of rare occurrence, and the bad quality of the scanty water was a trial both to temper and physique. For three days a heavy hot haze lay over the desert, and when it cleared a new panorama lay before us of gleaming blue mountains to the southward. This increased the pace of the caravan, for nearer than the mountains lay the oasis for which we longed.
