A sea of sand, stretching out in the distant horizon, without one object to mark its extensive surface, white and desolate in its vastness--such is the scene which proclaims the fearful desert of Sahara to the eye of the wanderer who has lost himself in these frightful regions.

In this also it resembles the sea, that it casts up waves, and often a misty vapor bangs over its surface.

But there is not the soft play of waves which unite all the coasts of the earth; each wave as it rolls in bringing a message from the remotest and fairest island kingdoms, and again rolling back as it were with an answer, in a sort of love-flowing dance.

No; there is here only the melancholy sporting of the hot wind with the faithless dust which ever falls back again into its joyless basin, and never reaches the rest of the solid land with its happy human dwellings.

There is here none of the sweet cool sea-breeze in which kindly fairies seem carrying on their graceful sport, forming blooming gardens and pillared palaces--there is only a suffocating vapor, rebelliously given back to the glowing sun from the unfruitful sands.
Hither the two youths arrived at the same time, and paused, gazing with dismay at the pathless chaos before them.