wastes; this is the voice of the desert,
though the muezzin cries from the high turrets of the city.
Indeed one is driven to repeating oneself about the repetition,
so overpowering is the impression of the tall horizons of those
tremendous plains, brooding upon the soul with all the solemn weight
of the self-evident.

There is indeed another aspect of the desert, yet more ancient
and momentous, of which I may speak; but here I only deal
with its effect on this great religion of simplicity. For it is
through the atmosphere of that religion that a man makes his way,
as so many pilgrims have done, to the goal of this pilgrimage.
Also this particular aspect remained the more sharply in my memory
because of the suddenness with which I escaped from it. I had not
expected the contrast; and it may have coloured all my after experiences.
I descended from the desert train at Ludd, which had all the look
of a large camp in the desert; appropriately enough perhaps,
for it is the traditional birthplace of the soldier St. George.
At the moment, however, there was nothing rousing or romantic
about its appearance. It was perhaps unusually dreary; for heavy
rain had fallen; and the water stood about in what it is easier
to call large puddles than anything so poetic as small pools.
A motor car sent by friends had halted beside the platform;
I got into it with a not unusual vagueness about where I
was going; and it wound its way up miry paths to a more rolling
stretch of country with patches of cactus here and there.
And then with a curious abruptness I became conscious that
the whole huge desert had vanished, and I was in a new land.
The dark red plains had rolled away like an enormous nightmare;
and I found myself in a fresh and exceedingly pleasant dream.

I know it will seem fanciful; but for a moment I really felt as if I
had come home; or rather to that home behind home for which we
are all homesick. The lost memory of it is the life at once
of faith and of fairy-tale. Groves glowing with oranges rose behind
hedges of grotesque cactus or prickly pear; which really looked
like green dragons guarding the golden apples of the Hesperides.
On each side of the road were such flowers as I had never seen
before under the sun; for indeed they seemed to have the sun in them
rather than the sun on them. Clusters and crowds of crimson anemones
were of a red not to be symbolised in blood or wine; but rather
in the red glass that glows i