A sea of sand, stretching out in the distant horizon, without one object
to mark its extensive surface, white and desolate in its vastness--such
is the scene which proclaims the fearful desert of Sahara to the eye of
the wanderer who has lost himself in these frightful regions. In this
also it resembles the sea, that it casts up waves, and often a misty
vapor bangs over its surface. But there is not the soft play of waves
which unite all the coasts of the earth; each wave as it rolls in
bringing a message from the remotest and fairest island kingdoms, and
again rolling back as it were with an answer, in a sort of love-flowing
dance. No; there is here only the melancholy sporting of the hot wind
with the faithless dust which ever falls back again into its joyless
basin, and never reaches the rest of the solid land with its happy human
dwellings. There is here none of the sweet cool sea-breeze in which
kindly fairies seem carrying on their graceful sport, forming blooming
gardens and pillared palaces--there is only a suffocating vapor,
rebelliously given back to the glowing sun from the unfruitful sands.
Hither the two youths arrived at the same time, and paused, gazing with
dismay at the pathless chaos before them. Zelinda’s track, which was not
easily hidden or lost, had hitherto obliged them almost always to remain
together, dissatisfied as Fadrique was at the circumstance, and angry as
were the glances he cast at his unwelcome companion. Each had hoped to
overtake Zelinda before she had reached the desert, feeling how almost
impossible it would be to find her once she had entered it. That hope
was now at an end; and although in answer to the inquiries they made in
the Barbary villages on the frontier, they heard that a wanderer going
southward in the desert and guiding his course by the stars would,
according to tradition, arrive at length at a wonderfully fertile oasis,
the abode of a divinely beautiful enchantress, yet everything appeared
highly uncertain and dispiriting, and was rendered still more so by the
avalanches of dust before the travellers’ view.
The youths looked sadly at the prospect before them, and their horses
snorted and started back at the horrible plain, as though it were some
insidious quicksand, and even the riders themselves were seized with
doubt and dismay. Suddenly they sprung from their saddles, as at some
word of command, unbridled their horses, loosened their girths, and
turned them loose on the desert, that they might find their way back
to some happier dwelling place. Then, taking some provision from their
saddle-bags, they placed it on their shoulders, and casting aside their
heavy riding boots they plunged like two courageous swimmers into the
trackless waste.