Show crossing the arabia arabian n desert mr russell the well known war correspondent from the crimea from india and from italy of the london times in hie his diary of I 1 india gives his impressions of the desert as I 1 follows I 1 the desert on which we debouched debauched debou ched from the rich oasis of cairo even now a glorious mass of green resembles the bed of some deep sea not level and smooth but corrugated tossed into mountains and reefs of sand seamed with shallow ravines and inclosing in the sweep of the sand hills bills immense ed with a glistening even coat of circular and oval stones varying in size from a nine pound ahot to a grape how they shine in the suni bun sun flashing back its rays from the polished sides so thatah times where the plain stretches far I 1 away to the tumuli on the horizon it is scarce possible to believe that it is not a dancing sparkling sea which is bounded by the side of the railway this effect is increased b by y the waving lines of the ramified rarified air which give to the verge of the great circle of desolation the I 1 appearance of a rough and rapid tideway no pen can describe no pencil convey the real sentiment of the desert 2 we watch with the profound profoundest est eat interest a at whiz string rin of camels mere aspects in the distance which under the care of two Arab sare gare plowing their heir way over the sand hills hilla toward the h horizon orizon on which stands a solitary date tree the sense of infinite space is first impressed on one by that which is we know definite enough in ili actuality but somehow or other the sea is bounded in our notions we see it marked out in in maps and rounded off in the terrestrial terr estial globes so that its vastness is destroyed but none of us can tell where this great desert ends where are its bounds how far it pushes its sandy waves into the sandy heart of the continent sir roderick munison mut Mus hison hlson may know burton may be able abie to tell us all about it ii but is not profitable to remove the feeling Z of immensity of vagueness and of barren grandeur and primeval antiquity which ia is produced by the sight of the desert whereon the israelites wandered and where the legions of Camb bes ses found nameless cemeteries to me there is is no sense of 0 barrenness produced by the sea aea beathe the deserts first effect is productive of the sensation of a world destroyed of barrenness waste and lifelessness blanched bones of camels lie in dull whiteness on oli the sands not a bird fans the hot silent air stones and sand sand and stones are all and everything and ed out dead and hard under the blue sky and the relentless sun the rail which conveys us through this desolation is single 0 and the line is said by en lish engineers to bt very badly badeas the french engineers who laid it out took it over a ridge 1100 feet high instead of following a low level near the river which 1 would have greatly diminished expense and cost of working the water and coal for the engines t has to be carried by the train out to the various stations so they are like corn coin commissariat missa riat animals in a barren con country which have to carry their own fodder and diminish their public burtrens bur these stations are helpless b hot oven like erections generally ek eked out by old crimean wooden huts within the shade of which may be seen an undoubted englishman eng lishman smoking hiis hils his pipe at the twelfth station we coaled th the etrain train ended in the desert here but at long iong intervals I 1 for miles in advance wc we could see the encamp ments of arabs who for the time bad become nav vies and were engaged in picking and burrowing and blasting through the rocks a way for the iron horse borse in a long iong wooden shed the center of a group of tents were laid out long tables covered with hot joints of recondite animals animal s papier mache chickens and lignite g vegetables this was our dinner it had bad come all ati the way from cairo so had thew the w ne I 1 and beer and spirits rits if manna and quails sti sil spirits were at all eata eatable ae we had envied the food of the israelites |