The Democratic advocate., 1894-06-30
Deserts and Desert Storms.

'call; and 1t came to pass that l settled
there too.
Deserts and Desert Storms.
waldemar Bry in the Pittsburgh Dispatch.
every direction knows comparatively little
of those large tracts of arid lands designated
in our Biographies as "deserts." We owe
the peculiar existing ideas of the nature of
deserts and the supposed dangers connected
with journey across them to the notes of
the earlier travellers and explorers of the
century. Renowned travellers, such as
Cassati, Rohlfs, LEM, Nachtigal, &C., have
in their various works and lectures tried in
vain to throw the searchlight of their ex-
perience on the prevalent ideas of these
"Fables of the Desert" and have shown,
citing their own experience as a guarantee
for truth, that the greater number Of these
so-called dangers of the desert are mere
pictures of imagination, and nothing else.
| will try to enlighten the reader and dis
sect with the scalpel of experience some of
the most interesting of these fables.
There are still great many people in
the world whose imagination brings before
their minds eye the desert as boundless
ocean of sand, which the winds and storms
keep in constant turmoil and which create
the so much dreaded, so much heard-of
sandstorms, which they tell us at times
bury whole caravans of men and beast and
wares beneath its undulating, cruel sands.
How different is the reality.
Each desert, whether located in Africa,
Asia, or America, has within its bounda-
ries, without doubt, stretches of sand
large enough to be compared to an ocean
of sand. Take the Sahara, for instance,
which is correctly named the "desert of
deserts" and you find such an area situated
west of Egypt, geographically known as
the Lybian Desert; but every desert, and
the Sahara in particular, offers other land
scapes than this; enormous plateaus, yes,
even mountain chains, some of the peaks
rising to an altitude of 5000 feet, can be
found within its limits and give far more
variety to the scenery of the desert than
the groups of GASES which bob up from the
plains here and there like green islands in
an ocean.
On these plateaus we find stretches Of
the stone desert, which the Arabs call
"Hamada." Here you see to the limits of
your horizon nothing but tremendous vari-
colored and multi-shaped rocks and bowl
ders. West to the "Hamadas" we come
upon portion of the Sahara which for
leagues and leagues is covered with peb-
bles, their sizes varying from pea to an
English walnut. These are called in Ara
bian "Sserir, and one of the largest of
these was crossed by the African explorer
Rohlfs in trying to reach the Oasis of
Kufra. 1t took him four days and ten
hours Of constant travel to accomplish this.
And now to the sandstorms Is the
"Samum, as it is called. really poison
which brings destruction to man and beast?
just as we discriminate between wind
and a storm, just so the Sahara has sand
winds and sandstorms. Nachtigal, the
great explorer relates that during visit at
"Mursuk" the air was so filled with sand
and dust everything on the oasis, the green
in the gardens, the palms, &C., was changed
to dirty grayish color, and such veil Of
dust covered the heavens that the sun ap.
peared as mere white speck, whose rays
were so broken that the entire surroundings
were in constant twilight.
This was the result of sandwind. The
"Samum, or sandstorm, makes its appear
ance in quite different manner. About
an hour, or even more, before it reaches
you, heavy yellow clouds of sand appear
on the horizon. The atmosphere is heavy
and charged with electricity. A tired
feeling befalls man and beast, and the cam
els become unruly. The camels are forced
to lie down, their heads with the wind
Men and women cover themselves with
their clothes, doing their best to have their
faces well concealed. The ''samum" gen
orally lasts from ten to thirty minutes, aud
is frequently accompanied by very heavy
rainfall
A 'tsamum" with such downpour was
encountered by Rohlfs on Easter Monday,
April II, 1879. The air was leaden. The
wind changed to a regular hurricane
Rohlfs had his tent, which was the larg-
est of the caravan, taken down and
crawled underneath the canvass, awaiting
the "brije of the desert, as the Bedouin
calls the "samum." The storm became
fercer aud fercer, thick clouds of which
you could not tell were they sand or
masses of the steam circled with terrific
velocity over rhe heads of the travellers;
cannonade of thunder vibrated the earth.
Once in while you heard the cracking Of
a palm as the storm broke itin two. Then
the storm lifted the tent like a balloon,
and, to make the confusion perfect, the
rain came down in such volume that a
few seconds suficed to drench to the skin.
Then all Of sudden, as if by magic, it
became wonderfully still and the glorious
sun appeared again in the purest aud bluest
of ethers, and its powerful tropical rays
soon dried everything. Without doubt
the 'samum" is one Of the worst plaques
of the desert; it weakens man and beast,
and the sand and dust which is driven be-
fore it forces its way through the smallest
crevices and thickest covers, and permeates
mouth, nose, and eyes, but not in such
quantities that it cannot be got rid Of with
ease. The very finest sand even forces its
way into Watches but none Of it will sutfo-
cate man or animal.