This looks to me like the beginning of a simoom; if so, we'd better wrap _our_ shawls about our faces as the Arabs are doing. Notice how the rising wind picks up and twirls the sand about the camels' legs and sends it stinging into the faces of the men. Maybe it will die down as quickly as it came; maybe it will increase into a choking sand-storm that will last a week. ] And how keen those dark eyes must be; and what a memory for the look of things! At the beginning of the day's journey he is guided, as sailors are at sea, by the stars. But soon the winds begin to rise, as the desert farther away is warming under the sun, and the fine sand drifts and shifts like snow, filling up our own tracks as fast as they are made; so, you may be sure, it is leaving no guiding tracks made by previous travellers. But this man has known every hill, every dune, and every rocky gully along the way since he himself was a little boy, and went over this same route sitting on the camel with his mother while his father stalked on before. [Illustration: A CARAVAN ON THE MARCH Here is a caravan lumbering along over what appears to be a pretty well-beaten roadway in Algeria where many improvements to facilitate travel have been made by the French. It must be about 8.00 A. M. or 4.00 P. M. Shouldn't you say so, from the shadows? ] Presently we come across another little group of travellers going in another direction. They are on their way north to the summer pastures; for you see they have a little flock of sheep and goats and two donkeys. And there are two men. These people are probably two families travelling together. But they are not so well-to-do as our Arab. They have no camel to carry the women and children. So dogs, donkeys, men, women, children, and the sheep and goats all tramp along together. [Illustration: THE FORLORN LITTLE RAT OF THE DESERT SANDS If you've read Roosevelt's books on Africa you've met this little creature before. But isn't he the rattiest-looking rat you ever saw? He has only a hair here and there on his yellow skin; and no eyes to speak of. He can hardly see at all, spending most of his time, as he does--like the sightless creatures of caves--in the pitch-dark of his underground burrow. Yet, I suppose, like that desert boy it tells about at the end of this chapter, he thinks there's no place like home! ] They are not worried because they are poor; for listen, they are singing! It's a melancholy kind of song, as we think. It reminds us of the queer sound the sand grains make when the desert winds are beginning to blow. But to the Arab it is music. What a lot of verses it has--all just alike--and sung over and over again.