Note 63 — Chapter XIV

Oudney says:—"The presence of nothing but deep sand-valleys and high sand-hills strikes the mind forcibly. There is something of the sublime mixed with the melancholy. Who cannot contemplate without admiration masses of loose sand fully four hundred feet high, ready to be tossed about by every breeze, and not shudder with horror at the idea of the unfortunate traveller being entombed in a moment by one of these fatal blasts, which sometimes occur?" I agree with the Doctor about the sublime and melancholy mixed in contemplating these regions of sand. But they are by no means dangerous. No people that I heard of had been entombed under these fatal blasts. I am almost sorry now that I did not pass through the region of Mislah in a Saharan hurricane, and then I should have known all.