difficulty is experienced in getting
through the sand; but the width is not great, and the dim trail is
recovered on the southern side with the assistance of a chance
acquaintance.

This chance acquaintance is an Eliaute goat-herd, whom I unwittingly
scared nearly out of his senses, and whose gratitude at finding himself
confronting a kindly-disposed human being instead of some supernatural
agent of destruction, is very great indeed. He was slumbering at his
post, this gentle guardian of a herd of goats, stretched at full length
on the ground. Surveying his unconscious form for a moment and carried
away by the animal-like simplicity of his face, I finally shout "Hoi!"
Opening his eyes with a start and seeing a white-helmeted head surveying
him over the top of a weird, bristling object, the natural impulse of
this simple-hearted child of the desert is to seek safety in flight.
Recovering his head, however, upon hearing reassuring words, he adopts
the propitiatory course of rushing impulsively forward and kissing my
hand.

Spending his whole life here on the lonely desert in the constant society
of a herd of goats, rarely seeing a stranger or meeting anybody to speak
to outside the very limited members of his own tribesmen in yonder tents,
he seems to have almost lost the power of conversation. His replies are
mere guttural gruntings, as though the ever-present music of bleating
goats has had the lamentable effect of neutralizing the naturally
superior articulation of a human being and dragging his powers of
utterance down almost to the ignoble level of "mb-b-a-a."

My small stock of Persian words seems also to be altogether lost upon his
warped and blunted powers of understanding, and it is only by an
elaborate use of pantomime that I finally succeed in making my wants
understood. He possesses the simple hospitable instincts of a child of
Nature's broad solitudes; he leads the way for over a mile to put me on
the now scarcely perceptible continuation of the trail, and with a
worshipfully anxious face he begs of me to go and stay over night at the
tents.

My road leads right past the little cluster of black tents; several women
outside collecting stunted brushwood greet me with the silent, wondering
stare of people incapable of any deeper display of emotion than the
animals they daily associate with and subsist upon; half-naked children
stare at me in a dreamy sort of way from beneath the tents. Even the dogs
seem to