But there is besides in the desert the fateful mirage that, like the ocean sirens, has lured so many to their doom. Finally there is the oasis which stands out of the sea of shimmering sand, like an island paradise that towers over the waste of seething waters which encircle it. The desert too, like the sea, has its ships and its men. Ships that pass by day as well as by night. Ships that stride across the great sandy wastes, grunting and gawky, with unwearying patience, unyielding tenacity, and unerring instinct. As are the ships, so are the men. But in place of gawkiness and grunts, the golden virtue of silence, and the conscious pride of natural dignity. Men who in their very port and carriage are the very spirit and personification of the desert. Men who represent not the genii, but the genius of the great dry sea of sand and silence. Indeed, if ever men on this planet of ours were patriarchal, if ever men bore themselves with the gait and the simple dignity of free men, the Bedawins of Arabia and the North African deserts do. With the lynx-like, yet enigmatic expression that calls to mind a combination of eagle keenness and owl-like solemnity, there is about them a freedom of manner and bearing, a dignity of carriage, an independence of character, that are the peculiarly glorious and distinctive heirlooms of the air, expanse and grandeur of these inland seas. In every sense, moral and physical, they are the products of an unrestricted environment that has made them what they are--wanderers on the face of the earth. But wanderers from choice. Untrammelled even to licence; giving an unbridled rein to their spirit of independence. Regarding with supreme contempt the luxuries and even necessaries of civilization. Yet with it all slaves to the spiritual fears that haunt them. Relics of a primitive and old-world civilization, there is about these Bedawins a flavour of antiquity, of a past that is hoary with the hoariness of eternal age, so distant that we cannot conjecture about it, even in the vaguest of terms. In addition to this everlasting antiquity and conservatism, there is about these patriarchs a naturally dignified reticence, and an air of calm, quiet assurance and authority, that are peculiarly their own personal property. But there is even more than this. There is that same universal concept--common to all primitive people who have not outlived it--of belief in the fear of a supreme power. That same awe and reverence for the patriarchal authority connected with that of the ancestors which has preceded it; that calm and philosophical acceptation of Karma or Fatalism; that same dread of consequences; that identical terror of malignant demons; that same shrinking from the inevitable, which is the heritage of all natural people. Inherent instincts that even twelve centuries of Islam have scarcely modified. When we get underneath the surface of human nature as represented by the Arab, whether he came from the east, the west, the