camel-driver found fault with his load. However, at length every article
was stowed, except a hand-organ and a few stand of arms. At length, a
great hulking savage offered to take the arms, provided they were cut in
two to suit the back of his animals. We have then another instance of Arab
drollery. "You are a tall man," said the old pilot; "suppose we shorten
you by the legs." "No, no," said the barbarian, "I am flesh and blood, and
shall be spoiled." "So will the contents of these cases, you offspring of
an ass," said the old man, "if you divide them."

The progress to the interior from the port of Tajura, led them over
immense ranges of basaltic cliffs, where the heat of the sun was felt with
an intensity scarcely conceivable by European feelings. In this land of
fire, the road skirting the base of a barren range covered with heaps of
lava blocks, and its foot marked by piles of stones, the memorials of
deeds of blood, the lofty conical peak of Jebel Seearo rose in sight, and
not long afterwards the far-famed Lake Assad, surrounded by its dancing
mirage, was seen sparkling at its base.

The first glimpse of this phenomenon, "though curious, was far from
pleasing"--"an elliptical basin, seven miles in its transverse axis,
filled half with smooth water of the deepest cerulean hue, and half with a
sheet of glittering snow-white salt, girded on three sides by huge
hot-looking mountains, that dip their basins into its very bowl, and on
the fourth by crude, half-formed rocks of lava, broken and divided by
chasms. No sound broke on the ear, not a ripple played on the water. The
molten surface of the lake lay like burnished steel, the fierce sky was
without a cloud, and the angry sun, like a ball of metal at a white heat,
rode in full blaze."

It is scarcely wonderful, that among a people devoted to superstition,