wind-drinkers

Updated: May 23, 2025

Imagine the ostrich-hunting on its borders; picture the natives riding their unequalled breed of horses, the wind-drinkers, which carry their masters a hundred miles a day, and which, ridden after the birds up-wind, gradually tire them down, until they can be knocked on the head with a bludgeon; the Arabs too, themselves, with the unforgettable manners possessed by such as Abraham, and handed down from time immemorial; last of all, Timbuctoo, the Queen of the Desert, the fabled home of the voracious cassowary, does not the picture imperiously summon the traveller "over the hills and far away"? Very far away; for Timbuctoo is twelve hundred miles from Mogador, and a journey there would mean at least forty days across the Sahara, through a country belonging to peoples in no way friendly towards "infidels," where oases are few and far between.

Isabel Savory - In the Tail of the Peacock