[James Bruce, 1730-1794 (nicknamed "Abyssinian Bruce"), gives a remarkable description of the simoom: "I saw from the south-east a haze come, in colour like the purple part of the rainbow, but not so compressed or thick. It did not occupy twenty yards in breadth, and was about twelve feet high from the ground. It was a kind of blush upon the air, and it moved very rapidly.... We all lay flat on the ground ... till it was blown over. The meteor, or purple haze, which I saw was, indeed, passed, but the light air which still blew was of a heat to threaten suffocation." He goes on to say that he did not recover the effect of the sandblast on his chest for nearly two years (Brace's _Life and Travels_, ed. 1830, p. 470).--Note to Edition 1832.] [dd] There are two MS. versions of lines 290-298: (A) a rough copy, and (B) a fair copy-- (A) _And wide the Spider's thin grey pall_ _Is curtained on the splendid wall_-- _The Bat hath built in his mother's bower_, _And in the fortress of his power_ _The Owl hath fixed her beacon tower_, _The wild dogs howl on the fountain's brim_ _With baffled thirst and famine grim_, _For the stream is shrunk from its marble bed_ _Where Desolation's dust is spread_.--[MS.] B. ["August 5, 1813, in last of 3rd or first of 4th ed."] _The lonely Spider's thin grey pall_ _Is curtained o'er the splendid wall_-- _The Bat builds in his mother's bower;_ _And in the fortress of his power_ _The Owl hath fixed her beacon-tower_, _The wild dog howls o'er the fountain's brink_, _But vainly lolls his tongue to drink_.--[MS.] [74] {100} [Compare "The walls of Balclutha were desolated.... The stream of Clutha was removed from its place by the fall of the walls. The fox looked out from the windows" (Ossian's _Balclutha_). "The dreary night-owl screams in the solitary retreat of his mouldering ivy-covered tower" (_Larnul, or the Song of Despair: Poems of Ossian_, discovered by the Baron de Harold, 1787, p. 172). Compare, too, the well-known lines, "The spider holds the veil in the palace of Cæsar; the owl stands sentinel on the watch-tower of Afrasyab" (_A Grammar of the Persian Language_, by Sir W. Jones, 1809, p. 106).] [de] _The silver dew of coldness sprinkling_ _In drops fantastically twinkling_ _As from the spring the silver dew_ _In whirls fantastically flew_ _And dashed luxurions coolness round_ _The air--and verdure on the ground_.--[MS.] [df] {101} _For thirsty Fox and Jackal gaunt_ _May vainly for its waters pant_.--[MS.] or, _The famished fox the wild dog gaunt_ _May vainly for its waters pant_.--[MS.] [dg] _Might strike an echo_----.--[MS.] [dh] {102} _And welcome Life though but in one_ _For many a gilded chamber's there_ _Unmeet for Solitude to share_.--- [MS.]