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When their course is fulfilled, the dial begins to cast westward an uncertain shadow; the eye-lids of day are opened, and birds and flowers, the startled vegetation, and fresh breeze awaken; the sun at length appears, and in majestic procession climbs the capitol of heaven. All proceeds, changes and dies, except the sense of misery in my bursting heart.

I should be inclined to regard the Egyptian deity primarily as a Culture Hero, rather than a Vegetation God. It is also permissible to point out that in the case of Tammuz, Esmun, and Adonis, the title is not a proper name, but a vague appellative, denoting an abstract rather than a concrete origin. Proof of this will be found later.

Upon one of the rush-covered islands a herd of elephants was discovered, almost concealed by the height of the vegetation.

It assured Von Bloom, however, that they had now got beyond the track of the locusts; and he kept on a little farther in hopes that the pasture might get better. It did not, however. The country through which they advanced was a wild, sterile plain almost as destitute of vegetation as that over which they had hitherto been travelling.

It was the only place we were to see in Yucatan, a country whose name is associated with ideas of tropical fruits, where you must cut your forest-path with a machete, and of vast ruins of deserted temples and cities, covered up with a mass of dense vegetation. But here there was nothing of this kind. Sisal is a miserable little town, standing on the shore, with a great salt-marsh behind it.

We were approaching the confines of Syria, and we enjoyed by anticipation, the pleasure we were about to experience, on treading a soil which, by its variety of verdure and vegetation, would remind us of our native land. At Messoudiah we likewise possessed the advantage of bathing in the sea, which was not more than fifty paces from our unexpected water-supply.

An evil country this, destitute of trees and all vegetation save small bushes few and prickly cactus a-many, a desolation of grim and jagged rocks and barren, sandy wastes full of sun-glare and intolerable heat.

Above it the rock rose bare, but at the ends of the semicircular strand a luxuriant vegetation began, stretching from the crimson shores back into far distances. Of browns and reds and yellows, like an autumn forest, was the foliage, with here and there patches of dark-green, as of conifers. Five miles or more, on each side, the forests swept, and then were lost to sight in the haze.

The remains of vegetables are all that we meet with in the most ancient strata deposited by the waters; still, they belong to plants of the simplest structure, to ferns, to species of rushes, to lycopodes. As we ascend into the upper strata, vegetation becomes more and more complex.

It appeared, as far as I could judge, to be about a mile and a half in circumference, the shore so steep that a big ship might have run in alongside it. The whole was covered with fine white sand, without a vestige of vegetation. I was unwilling to land, though I thought it possible water might be obtained, for I had a dread that Ali might leave me there and go off by himself.