Mr Davis never saw the Simoom in its full and dreadful force, nor did he witness any of those astounding exhibitions of sand-columns, circling in numbers over the surface of the desert, and overwhelming everything that come in their way, that Bruce once gazed upon with awe and wonder. But of snakes and scorpions, and suchlike poisonous inhabiters of the Desert, our author had his fill. On one occasion, when about to encamp, they found the ground literally covered with snakes, whose bite, the Arabs say, is certain death. “Happily for man,” said one of Mr Davis’s companions, “these reptiles have not the benefit of sight;—had they not been deficient in this, the world could not have existed, as these enemies of man would undoubtedly have extirpated him from the face of the earth! So powerful is their sting, that they have been known to have penetrated the large iron stirrup of the Hamama.” The snake thus alluded to—and we need hardly say, our readers may take the description _cum grano salis_—is the _liffa_ or _liffach_,—a reptile about a yard in length; and the account which the Arabs give of the death of those who have been bitten by it tallies very closely with the description which Lucan gives of the death of Nasidius in the same locality:— “A fate of different kind Nasidius found: A burning _prester_ gave the deadly wound,— And straight a sudden flame began to spread, And paint his visage with a glowing red. With swift expansion swells the bloated skin, Nought but an undistinguish’d mass is seen: The puffy poison spreads and heaves around, Till all the man is in the monster drown’d.”