By day, the heat is very trying, and there is a real danger occasionally in that strange phenomenon the "_Sâm_." This is apparently a very small whirlwind, akin to those which cause the "dust-devils" common enough in the land at all times, but composed of intensely heated air, flavoured often with sulphurous fumes. A man struck by it simply collapses, and unless prompt attendance can be given him he dies in a few minutes. The face is "blackened," and decomposition sets in very speedily. The natives not unnaturally refer to it as a "Poison wind." The phenomenon wanders about in the freakish fashion that we associate with the American tornadoes, though it never is dangerous, like them, from its mere pace and power. It will take one man out of a straggling party, or even a man on horse-back, while leaving his horse and his companion on foot unscathed. A British Consul has told the writer how on one occasion, turning to speak to his kavass who was riding a few yards behind him, he suddenly felt the hot blast and smelt the sulphurous fumes; while the kavass collapsed, and fell from his horse as if he had been shot. Prompt attention and stimulants revived the sufferer on that occasion, but it was a narrow escape. Had he been alone he would have died past question. Nobody seems to have investigated the matter scientifically, or to have compared it with like phenomena in other lands (such as Scinde for instance) where conditions are similar. It is really not surprising that the natives should put down the effect to a blow from a malignant "Jinn," though one suspects that as a matter of fact the explanation is this. Sudden contact with the heated, sulphur-laden blast of the little whirlwind just "tips the balance," and induces a stroke of heat-apoplexy in cases where the victim is already verging on that condition. Possibly the _Sâm_ is a last legacy of the now quiescent volcanoes; for similar sulphurous eddies, of a far less violent description, were playing about the surface of the sea off the Riviera coastline for some time after the great earthquake at San Remo in 1887.