In a short time the dry atmosphere changes the corpse into a natural mummy, which, ‘grinning horribly a ghastly smile,’ seems to defy the desert. Perchance some future caravan passing along throws some pious dust upon the shrivelled body, but the wind soon uncovers it again, for the shifting desert will not even grant a burial to its victims. On every great caravan route such mummies protruding from the sand meet the eye of the traveller, telling him, in their mute but expressive language, ‘Such, stranger, may be thy fate to-morrow.’ The arid desert produces only a few plants and animals, but stamps them all with its own peculiar mark. From the tawny Bedouin to the worm scarcely distinguishable in the sand, it gives all its creatures the same dress, the same colour, which might justly be called the colour of the desert. It is the pale greyish-yellow tint which belongs as well to the gazelle as to the small lark of the sandy wastes. Among the birds there are no doubt many modifications of this general rule, and the deviations increase as the desert gradually merges into the more fertile steppes, but even here its characteristic mark is not to be mistaken. A wandering desultory life is the lot of the children of the desert. The nourishment afforded them by their sterile home is too scanty for sedentary habits, and cannot be obtained without exertion. But Nature has endowed them with an activity and powers of endurance which distinguish them from many other animals, and enable them to exist where less hardy or less spirited beings would perish. Even such of them as originally did not belong to the desert, but since several generations have learnt to make it their home, such as the noble horse of the Bedouin, acquire the spirit it engenders. The same love of independence, the same attachment to their native haunts, animates all the inhabitants of the desert. Separated from their home they droop and pine away. The richest food affords the captive gazelle no compensation for the meagre herbage of the sandy waste; the widest space seems narrow when compared with its boundless extent.