Here is a vigorous effort made to unlock the difficulty. I should, however, have mentioned to the philosophic writer,--what I inadvertently failed to do,--that the sounds elicited from the sand of Eigg seem as directly evoked by the slant blow dealt it by the foot, as the sounds similarly evoked from a highly waxed floor, or a board strewed over with ground rosin. The sharp shrill note follows the stroke, altogether independently of the grains driven into the air. My omission may serve to show how much safer it is for those minds of the observant order, that serve as hands and eyes to the reflective ones, to prefer incurring the risk of being even tediously minute in their descriptions, to the danger of being inadequately brief in them. But, alas! for purposes of exact science, rarely are verbal descriptions otherwise than inadequate. Let us look, for example, at the various accounts given us of _Jabel Nakous_. There are strange sounds heard proceeding from a hill in Arabia, and various travellers set themselves to describe them. The tones are those of the convent _Nakous_, says the wild Arab;--there must be a convent buried under the hill. More like the sounds of a humming-top, remarks a phlegmatic German traveller. Not quite like them, says an English one in an Oxford gown;--they resemble rather the striking of a clock. Nay, listen just a little longer and more carefully, says a second Englishman, with epaulettes on his shoulder: "the sounds at their commencement may be compared to the faint strains of an Aeolian harp when its strings first catch the breeze," but anon, as the agitation of the sand increases, they "more nearly resemble those produced by drawing the moistened fingers over glass." Not at all, exclaims the warlike Zahor Ed-din Muhammed Baber, twirling his whiskers: "I know a similar hill in the country towards Hindu-kush: it is the sound of drums and nagarets that issues from the sand." All we really know of this often-described music of the desert, after reading all the descriptions, is, that its tones bear certain analogies to certain other tones,--analogies that seem stronger in one direction to one ear, and stronger in another direction to an ear differently constituted, but which do not exactly resemble any other sounds in nature. The strange music of _Jabel Nakous_, as a combination of tones, is essentially unique. CHAPTER V.