the melancholy sporting of the hot wind with the faithless dust which
ever falls back again into its joyless basin, and never reaches the
rest of the solid land with its happy human dwellings. There is here
none of the sweet cool sea-breeze in which kindly fairies seem
carrying on their graceful sport, forming blooming gardens and
pillared palaces--there is only a suffocating vapor, rebelliously
given back to the glowing sun from the unfruitful sands.

Hither the two youths arrived at the same time, and paused, gazing
with dismay at the pathless chaos before them. Zelinda's track,
which was not easily hidden or lost, had hitherto obliged them almost
always to remain together, dissatisfied as Fadrique was at the
circumstance, and angry as were the glances he cast at his unwelcome
companion. Each had hoped to overtake Zelinda before she had reached
the desert, feeling how almost impossible it would be to find her
once she had entered it. That hope was now at an end; and although
in answer to the inquiries they made in the Barbary villages on the
frontier, they heard that a wanderer going southward in the desert
and guiding his course by the stars would, according to tradition,
arrive at length at a wonderfully fertile oasis, the abode of a
divinely beautiful enchantress, yet everything appeared highly
uncertain and dispiriting, and was rendered still more so by the
avalanches of dust before the travellers' view.

The youths looked sadly at the prospect before them, and their horses
snorted and started back at the horrible plain, as though it were
some insidious quicksand, and even the riders themselves were seized
with doubt and dismay. Suddenly they sprung from their saddles, as
at some word of command, unbridled their horses, loosened their
girths, and turned them loose on the desert, that they might find