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Again I stood under the diaphanous skies, in air glorious as

aether, whose every breath raises men's spirits like sparkling

wine. Once more I saw the evening star hanging like a solitaire

from the pure front of the western firmament; and the after glow

transfiguring and transforming, as by magic, the homely and

rugged features of the scene into a fairy land lit with a light

which never shines on other soils or seas. Then would appear the

woollen tents, low and black, of the true Badawin, mere dots in

the boundless waste of lion tawny clays and gazelle brown

gravels, and the camp fire dotting like a glow worm the village

centre.