I have spent many of the most peaceful and enjoyable days of my life. I love its diaphanous skies, which are as limpid as the crystal heaven of Eden. I love its dry, ethereal, stimulating atmosphere which exalts the spirits, restores the zest of youth, intensifies the joy of living. Often, while within its quiet confines, I have exclaimed with St. Bernard and St. Jerome, _O sancta solituto!_ Then I realized, as never before, its attraction for the hermits of the Thebaid and the anchorets of the Syrian Chalcis. It matters not that the desert is as monotonous as the ocean; that its silence is broken only by the muffled footsteps of our even-paced camels; that there is a total absence of life--there is not a beast or bird or insect visible in the broad expanse; that on all sides one sees nothing but sterility, desolation, and death. This is all true--very true. But if the desert has the monotony of the ocean, it also holds within its mysterious solitudes all the awe and solemnity; all the grandeur and sublimity of the ocean. This is particularly true at the magic hour of refulgent sunset. Then its shifting sands and fantastically formed rocks--black asphalts, brown sandstones, gray and rose granites which are massed like groups of antediluvian monsters--are illumined by splendors of color and phantasmagorias of light which transform the most ordinary landscape into a veritable fairyland. The flanks and crest of Jebel Sinjar, a picturesque mountain range on our right, exhibit the same riot of color, the same marvelous contrasts of light and shade. At the base there is the delicate violet of the iris, at the summit the glowing red of the poppy, and above all is the soft, turquoise blue of the deep, steady empyrean. Then there appears the wonderful, mystic afterglow which completely transfigures everything on mountain and plain, and lights up the scene with a light that rarely shines in our cloudy, mist-enveloped clime. In the clear western sky, the evening star hangs like a solitaire. Presently there flash-out in rapid succession the stars and constellations which, in the long ago, were the wonder and the delight of the shepherds and the priest astronomers of Assyria and Chaldea. Near our tent the camels, relieved of their burdens, are quietly browsing on the scanty broom and brushwood which in these parts constitute their chief sustenance. Their Bedouin masters, seated in a circle, around an odorous camp fire, entertain one another by recounting past experiences and adventures and by singing their favorite songs, most of which are in a minor key and characterized by the frequent occurrence of the terrible name of Allah, which gives to their doleful chant a note of sadness that once heard one can never forget. Amid such scenes of nomadic life, we welcome the hour of sweet repose, when, beguiled by gentle dreams, we, like the lotus-eaters of old, soon become quite unconscious of the fleeting passage of time and of all the world beside.[316]