Such an expanse of savage and unrelieved desert might be part of some
cold and burned-out planet rather than of this fertile and bountiful
earth. Away and away it stretched to die into a soft, violet haze in
the extremest distance. In the foreground the sand was of a bright
golden yellow, which was quite dazzling in the sunshine. Here and
there, in a scattered cordon, stood the six trusty negro soldiers
leaning motionless upon their rifles, and each throwing a shadow which
looked as solid as himself. But beyond this golden plain lay a low line
of those black slag-heaps, with yellow sand-valleys winding between
them. These in their turn were topped by higher and more fantastic
hills, and these by others, peeping over each other's shoulders until
they blended with that distant violet haze. None of these hills were of
any height--a few hundred feet at the most--but their savage,
saw-toothed crests, and their steep scarps of sun-baked stone, gave them
a fierce character of their own.

"The Libyan Desert," said the dragoman, with a proud wave of his hand.
"The greatest desert in the world. Suppose you travel right west from
here, and turn neither to the north nor to the south, the first houses
you would come to would be in America. That make you home-sick, Miss
Adams, I believe?"

But the American old maid had her attention drawn away by the conduct of
Sadie, who had caught her arm by one hand and was pointing over the
desert with the other.

"Well, now, if that isn't too picturesque for anything!" she cried, with
a flush of excitement upon her pretty face. "Do look, Mr. Stephens!
That's just the one only thing we wanted to make it just perfectly
grand. See the men upon the camels coming out from between those