as an underground flow that is pretty likely to exist all the
year round.

One may follow a stream of considerable volume down the southern slope
of the Atlas Mountains. The volume of water grows less and less until at
last it apparently disappears. Not all is lost by evaporation, however;
possibly the greater part sinks into the porous rock waste. And the
rock waste?--perhaps it may be twenty, fifty, or one hundred and fifty
feet deep. At all events, the water sinks until it reaches bed rock or
clay through which it cannot pass. Then it flows along what may once
have been an above-ground channel until fierce winds and cloud-bursts
buried it deep.

But the half-savage dwellers of the desert know just where to tap these
underground reservoirs and streams; even the dumb animals know
instinctively where to look for water. It is merely a question of
instinct coupled with experience, and the animal's judgment is about as
good as the man's. When one finds the spot, it is necessary only to dig.
The water may be two feet below the surface or it may be ten feet. When
the moist sand is reached the task is half over. A foot or two more and
the hole begins to fill. The water is hot, brackish, and repulsive to
the taste, but it is water--and in the desert, water is water!

The simoom is also an institution of the desert. The simoom is
unmistakably a wind, and surely no one who has not had the experience
can appreciate it. Even the West India hurricanes or the typhoons of the
China Sea are more kindly. They have plenty of destructive energy, it is
true, but the simoom has all this and much else besides. It comes not
without warning, but the warning and the wind are not far apart. The
approach of the simoom is a dense black cloud of whirling and seething
fine dust. As it strikes one, the choking, suffocating blast of hot air
and dust overcomes everything that has life. The caravan men and the
animals as well turn their backs to the wind and lie down with faces
close to the ground. In a minute or two the full strength of the blast
is on and the simoom is picking up not only the fine rock waste, but the
coarser fragments as well, and is hurling them along at Empire State
Express velocity. One might as well try to face a hail of leaden
bullets. It is a cruel blast that neither animal nor human being can
withstand. The camels crouch with their heads pointing away from the
wind and nostrils close to the ground; their drivers lie prone wi