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A large, low moon turned the tops of the plume-grass to silver, and the stunted camel-thorn bushes and sour tamarisks into the likenesses of trooping devils. The smell of the sun had not left the earth, and little aimless winds blowing across the rose-gardens to the southward brought the scent of dried roses and water.
Traces of old irrigating ditches and fields in one or two places tell the tale of an attempt to reclaim portions of this desert long ago; but now the camel-thorn and kindred hardy shrubs hold undisputed sway on every hand.
It promises to be a cold, draughty, comfortless night, and the prospects for supper look gloomy enough in the light of smoky camel-thorn and no samovar to make a cup of tea. Such is the cheerless prospect confronting me after a hard day's run, when, soon after dark, a man arrives with a thrice-welcome invitation from a Russian officer, who he says is staying at the caravanserai.
When Moses had led the 600,000 men, with their wives, children, and cattle, beyond the reach of the Egyptians, they were in a small peninsula, between the arms of the Red Sea, with the wild desolate peaks of Mount Horeb towering in the midst, and all around grim stony crags, with hardly a spring of water; and though there were here and there slopes of grass, and bushes of hoary-leaved camel-thorn, and long-spined shittim or acacia, nothing bearing fruit for human beings.
He was killed in the Kaffir War of 1879, not far from the Taba 'Ndoda. I think it was on the third day after the rush that Brown, who was the only moneyed man among us, first expressed his full belief in the mine. We were seated under a camel-thorn close to the edge of the kopje, and were just about to begin our midday meal.
This camel-thorn is a light, spriggy shrub, so that the size of their burthens is large in proportion to its weight. Instead of being borne on the head, they are carried in a way that forms a complete bushy background, against which the shrouded form of the woman is undistinguishable a few hundred yards away.
On the third morning after their arrival at the Vaal, they set off; accompanied by the Hottentots, to the plain which they had spoken of; riding through magnificent groups of acacia or camel-thorn trees, many of which were covered with the enormous nests of the social grosbeaks.
Tim's sheep were apparently deserted; but he was discovered swinging head downwards from the branch of a camel-thorn, and seeing him, it did strike one that if he had had a tail he would have been swinging by that. Phoebe called to him: he never answered, but set off running to her, and landed himself under her nose in a wheel somersault. "I hope you are watching them, Tim," said his mistress.
The Hottentots and Kafir vociferated and yelled, and made the unearthly row of a dozen wild beasts wrangling: the horses drew the bullocks, they the wagon; it crawled and creaked, and its appendages wobbled finely. Slowly they creaked and wobbled past apricot hedges and detached houses and huts, and got into an open country without a tree, but here and there a stunted camel-thorn.
Like a very large proportion of his people, the Khan is suffering from chronic ophthalmia; but he peruses the letter by the glimmer of a blaze of camel-thorn. The intentions of these people were plainly most hospitable from the beginning, so that it is difficult to determine about the effect of the letter.
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