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That is why it is no slave who soothes your fever to-day with stories that you do not even listen to, but the last descendant of the great Sonrhaï Emperors, of Sonni-Ali, the destroyer of men and of countries, of Mohammed Azkia, who made the pilgrimage to Mecca, taking with him fifteen hundred cavaliers and three hundred thousand mithkal of gold in the days when our power stretched without rival from Chad to Touat and to the western sea, and when Gâo raised her cupola, sister of the sky, above the other cities, higher above her rival cupolas than is the tamarisk above the humble plants of sorghum."
Everywhere the surface was burnt up by the sun, and withered from want of rain. Towards evening we entered a broad slope called by the Somal Dihh Murodi, or Murodilay, the Elephants' Valley. Crossing its breadth from west to east, we traversed two Fiumaras, the nearer "Hamar," the further "Las Dorhhay," or the Tamarisk waterholes.
The ailanthus, now coming into notice as a sand-loving tree, some species of tamarisk, and perhaps the Aspressus macrocarpa, already found useful on the dunes in California, may prove valuable auxiliaries in resisting the encroachment of drifting sands, whether in America or in Europe, and the intermixing of different species would doubtless be attended with as valuable results in this as in other branches of forest economy.
In Mexico the Indian carnation is popularly known as the "flower of the dead," and the people of Tahiti cover their dead with choice flowers. In America the Freemasons place twigs of acacia on the coffins of brethren. The Buddhists use flowers largely for funeral purposes, and an Indian name for the tamarisk is the "messenger of Yama," the Indian God of Death.
This left that part open to the outside world; for the shrubs that used to grow thick at the feet of the tamarisk trees had been rooted up and green tenting-cloth stretched in their place. One shrub still grew in the midst of that opening.
It was already afternoon when they were on the track that leads to the lake, leaving the groves of palms behind them and the low houses of the fellahîn, moving slowly towards the sand-hills that appeared far off, where huddled the patched and discoloured tents of the gipsies and the almost naked fishermen who are the only dwellers in this strange and blanched desolation, where the sands and the salty waters meet in a wilderness of tamarisk bushes.
Over the fields behind, the larks were hymning the promise of the unripe corn; the foreshore was painted all colours, from vivid green to mushroom pink; by the edge of the blue sea little black figures stooped, gathering sapphire. The air smelled sweet in the shade of the tamarisk; there was ineffable peace.
The little obelisk beyond the last sphinx on the left began to change, as in Egypt all things change at sunset pylon and dusty bush, colossus and baked earth hovel, sycamore, and tamarisk, statue and trotting donkey. It looked like a mysterious finger pointed in warning toward the sky. The Nile began to gleam. Upon its steel and silver torches of amber flame were lighted.
Besides these delights, the cottage had a plantation of ash and hazel above it, that climbed straight to the smooth turf and the four guns of the Battery; and a garden with a tamarisk hedge, and a bed of white violets, the earliest for miles around, and a fuchsia tree three times as tall as Kit, and a pink climbing rose that looked in at Kit's window and blossomed till late in November.
He knew not how long he had sat there in the darkness unafraid, when the light in the room was moved. A chill smote his heart. He jumped over the wall and drew nearer, in the hope to catch some word of what was going on in there. Inside the hedge of tamarisk the air was sweet with flower scents, which floated thick and separate on the still air, like oil on water. He came beneath the window.
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