The camels, growling and grumbling, lay outside the camp. The fire flashed over the motley figures of the Arabs crouching over it, and looking into it with melancholy eyes. The Commander, chagrined that his active duties must commence that evening, and vexed at the result of his diplomacy in the Khan, moved sulkily and silently among the pots and pans, while the Howadji sat smoking in the tent, whose yellow-lined sides drawn back at the door, framed the picture. All around, the black . night closed us in, blacker and more mysterious for the sense of the dumb desert that lay in it. Out of that desert, low, fitful gusts stole through the darkness, and puffed and played with the fire as with a glittering toy. And as the flame mounted and strained in the wind's embrace, it flashed upon the white blank of the tomb, and shrank again among the Arabs, affrighted.

The Commander donned the golden-sleeve and brought us tea. It was placed on an irregular circular stool, five or six inches high, which served as our desert table. There was more than the original flavor of China and the derived flavor of leather bottles in that tea, for it tasted of pleasant firesides and remembered tables; and by the vivid contrast, as by a song of home, plunged us more remotely into the widerness.

That ceremony over and another chibouque smoked, we lay down to sleep. We had brought no iron bedsteads, as many wisely do; but I was not sorry to feel that I was lying on the desert.

Once at midnight in a ship at sea, I awoke and was conscious of the gentle rocking of the ocean. I knew

that the moon was bright upon the canvass above, that even the studding-sails were set, and that the odors of Portugal were in the air. I knew that a strong hand was at the wheel, and a faithful eye at the bow, and that the fleet Nebraska was staunch and sure.

But in that moment, a speck upon a chip in the wilderness of waters, my sense of confidence was in the slow sway of the ocean. For the motion was gentle as that of a mother to a sleeping child, and the languid creak of the rigging, like a nurse's drowsy croning. It was a feeling of life, and the faith that life always inspires.

But when I stretched myself upon the desert, and perceived its slight unevenness, like the undulation of the sea, stiffened forever, and heard only the breathing of camels-strange, demoniac animals-and the rustle of ghostly winds from the desert and the darkness, I was penetrated with a sense of death, and felt how much more awful is the desert than the sea.

I lay long awake, in reveries stranger than dreams— then fell into a doze, a limbo of fantastic fancies-then was aware of a strange sound in the night. In that environment of death, it was like the wail of the Banshee. It was near and far, and filled all the air—a melancholy cry, that died through rich, lingering cadences into the extremest distance, then poured its plaintive sweetness into the silence that clung, saddened, more closely to my heart.

I did not know that it was the Muezzin's cry. In that pathetic wail I did not hear, as the faithful heard, Al-lahu-Ak-bar. There is no God but God.

V.

The Camel.

THE sun was a sluggard next morning.

We were up with the last stars, and as I pushed aside the tent curtains before dawn, I saw the constellations that are the glory of our western evenings. Orion and Pleiades were sinking in the West. The stars descended so near to the horizon that we seemed to be embowered in them. They are naturally worshipped in the desert, those friendly, solitary wanderers through space, not unlike the lonely voyagers of the wilderness.

Hot water, tea, toast, and a chibouque, were things of a moment. There was no luxurious smoking, however, in those early hours. Tents were falling, camels loading and growling, Arabs scolding and swearing; there was the hurry of awaking, the despatch of day, and the Commander putting on his arsenal. I say "despatch,” and a chorus of camels from the desert snorts me to scorn. But an hour and a half usually sufficed for the matutinal ceremonies. Then a few cinders and scattered straws upon the sand, were the remains of our pleasant desert pavilion, and falling into line, tied by the halter to the preceding tail, the camels moved on, and the caravan proceeded.

A camel excites no sentiment or affection in the Western, nor did I observe any indication of the Arab's love for the animal. He is singularly adapted to his business of walking over the desert; but is awkward and cross, and destitute of any agreeable trait. His motion is ludicrously stiff and slow. He advances as if his advent were the coming of grace and beauty, and the carriage of his neck and head is comically conceited, beyond words. My camel never suggested a pleasurable emotion to me but once, and that was on this first morning, when, as we moved from the camp, he lifted his head toward the desert and sniffed, as if he tasted home and his natural freedom in the unpolluted air.

The camels seem to be only half tamed, and sometimes, seduced by the fascination of the desert's breath, they break from the caravan, and dash away in a wild grotesque trot, straight into the grim silence of the wilderness, bearing the luckless Howadji upon a voyage too vague, and pursued by the yells and moans of the Bedoueen. They are guided by a halter, slipped behind their ears and over the nose, and they swing their flexile necks like ostriches. In the first desert days I sometimes thought to alter the direction of my beast by pulling the halter. But I gathered in its whole length, hand over hand, and only drew the long neck quite round, so that the great stupid head was almost between my knees, and the hateful eyes stared mockingly at my

I learned afterward to guide the animal by touching the side of the neck with a stick.

The Pacha's was a smaller beast than mine, and

looked and acted like a Cassowary. The Arabs called him El Shiraz, and the Commander's was dubbed Pomegranate by the same relentless poets. Mine was an immense and formidable brute. He was called by a name which seemed to me, naturally enough, to sound like Boobie, a name which the Commander interpreted to be one of the titles of a beautiful woman. But the great, scrawny, sandy bald back of his head, and his general rusty toughness and clumsiness, insensibly begot for him in my mind the name of MacWhirter, and by that name he was known so long as I knew him.

The motion of the camel, which is represented as very wearisome, we found to be soothing. The monotonous swing made me intolerably drowsy in the still, warm mornings, and the Dragomen tell tales of Howadji who drop asleep as they ride, and who, losing their balance, break arms, legs, and necks, in their fall to the ground. The tedium of camel-riding is its sluggishness, for although the beasts can trot so that Sultans and Caliphs have despatched expresses in eight days from Cairo to Damascus, yet the trot of the usual travelling camel is very hard. The Pacha's El Shiraz had a sufficiently pleasant trotting gait; but MacWhirter's exertions in that kind, shook my soul within me.

Yet with all this, the effect of the motion of the camel, separated from his awkward and ridiculous form and its details, is stately and dignified. So much so, indeed, that the imagination would select him, first, as the bearer of a dignitary in a pageant. Covered with long sweeping draperies, which should conceal him entirely,