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A glance at the map will show that, while the Gulf of Venice is not literally, it is practically, considered with reference to the effect produced by the south-east wind called the Sirocco, at the head of the Adriatic.
Alas! what vicissitudes had that coast been witness to! There, where the idle wave was now rolling, rode in other days the galleys of Rome; and there, where the stifling sirocco was sweeping the herbless plain, rose the villas of her senators, amid the bloom and fragrance of the orange and the olive.
We had encountered that blasting wind known as the "sirocco" the scourge of the Mediterranean which after gathering force and heat in the African deserts comes with its fiery and sand-laden breath to sap the moisture from all who have not the natures of salamanders. Fortunately we soon passed beyond its sphere of action. Darkness rapidly sets in in these regions of eternal summer.
Those terrible summer months with the burning sirocco had laid many of the troops low with sickness in their crowded quarters; ammunition and food were beginning to run short, and the troops were becoming more and more dispirited at the failure of their numerous attacks and the unending toll of lives.
Madeira, a still more popular sanatorium for this disease, is a complete delusion. Instead of the climate being essentially dry, it is saturated with humidity during a great part of the year; and the peculiar sirocco of the place is of a hot, dry, irritating nature.
Their right was commanded by Mahomet Sirocco, viceroy of Egypt; their left by Uluch Ali, dey of Algiers, the most redoubtable of the corsair lords of the sea. The breeze continued light. It was nearly noon when the fleets came face to face. The sun, now nearing the zenith, shone down from a cloudless sky.
The last four-and-twenty hours of our journey have been very tiring. The scenery has been so monotonous; endless long undulating plains like the waves of the sea, covered with grass quite dried up, a few flowers, and a bee-shaped cactus. The heat was very oppressive, a hot sirocco, wind blowing which; obliged us to keep our windows shut on account of the fine alkaline dust.
Built at the eastern extremity of a fine gulf that of Les Anges and backed by an amphitheatre of hills and lofty mountains, she is sheltered from cold winds in winter, and in summer the Alpine breezes temper an atmosphere which would else be unendurably sultry, owing to the prevalence of the sirocco, a hot wind which passes directly hither over the Mediterranean from the burning shores of Africa.
So far as tobacco is concerned, Nepenthe can be nothing but a ship at anchor." "True," said the Count. "The moist sirocco is injurious to the finer growths." "This south wind!" exclaimed Mr. Heard. "This African pest! Is there no other wind hereabouts? Tell me, Count, does the sirocco always blow?" "So far as I have observed it blows constantly during the spring and summer.
Then the angel said to him, "Remember the leper in Joppa," and poor Judas recalled how once when the hot wind, called the sirocco, swept through the streets of Joppa, and he saw a naked leper by the wayside, sitting in agony from the heat and the drifting sand, Judas had thrown his cloak over him for a shelter and received his thanks.
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