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The witches have also a decoy ready for him in the desart; yet he sups with Okba's daughter, without any of the sorcerers being aware of it; and afterwards proceeds to consult the simorg, without meeting with any obstacle or molestation. The simoom kills Abdaldar, too, in spite of that ring which afterwards protects Thalaba from lightning, and violence, and magic.
Before he can walk, or speak, he is carried through pathless wastes in search of food; and roams in the arms of his mother, and on the back of a camel, from spring to spring, and from pasture to pasture. Even then he begins his conflict with hunger and thirst; is scorched by a vertical sun; shriveled by the burning sand beneath; and poisoned by the breath of the simoom.
The simoom is fearful, and the heat is so intense that it was impossible to draw the gun-cases out of their leather covers, which it was necessary to cut open. All woodwork is warped; ivory knife-handles are split; paper breaks when crunched in the hand, and the very marrow seems to be dried out of the bones by this horrible simoom. One of our camels fell down to die.
During the cool months, from November until February, the desert journey is not disagreeable; but the vast area of glowing sand exposed to the scorching sun of summer, in addition to the withering breath of the simoom, renders the forced march of two hundred and thirty miles in seven days, at two and a half miles per hour, one of the most fatiguing journeys that can be endured.
The country was utterly barren at that season, as the extreme heat of the sun and simoom destroys all vegetation so thoroughly that it becomes as crisp as glass; the dried grass breaks in the wind, and is carried away in dust, leaving the earth so utterly naked and bare that it is rendered a complete desert.
The pastoral slopes of the valley below were cloaked in lustre-leather: the rare watercourses along the road had faded from the waiting eye and ear; it seemed as if the long and dry summer had even invaded the close-set ranks of pines, and had blown a simoom breath through the densest woods, leaving its charred red ashes on every leaf and spray along the tunnelled shade.
There was a stifling smell of hot oil everywhere. The steam- engines shone with it, the dresses of the Hands were soiled with it, the mills throughout their many stories oozed and trickled it. The atmosphere of those Fairy palaces was like the breath of the simoom: and their inhabitants, wasting with heat, toiled languidly in the desert.
"But," said Rossitur, "pardon me, have you no regard to the effect of his misrepresentations?" "You are mistaken, Mr. Rossitur," said Carleton slightly; this is but the blast of a bellows, not the Simoom." "Then what answer shall I have the honour of carrying back to my friend?" said Capt. Beebee, after a sort of astounded pause of a few minutes. "None, of my sending, sir." Capt.
"Your highness it is the opinion of your slave, if such were to take place, that all the fools would have left the country." "Very true, Mustapha; but my mouth is parched up with the sand of that simoom sherbet I cannot drink, rakee I must not, the hakim has forbid it; what must it be then, Mustapha?"
A nation of thirty millions of people, had been for ten years agitated by the most terrible convulsions. There is no atrocity, which the tongue can name, which had not desolated the doomed land. Every passion which can degrade the heart of fallen man, had swept with simoom blast over the cities and the villages of France.
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