and stalls and, without transition, to find this! . . .

Our horses have, inevitably, to slacken speed as the wheels of our
carriage sink into the sand. Around us still are some stray ramblers,
who presently assume the air of ghosts, with their long black or white
draperies, and noiseless tread. And then, not a soul; nothing but the
sand and the moon.

But now almost at once, after the short intervening nothingness, we
find ourselves in a new town; streets with little low houses, little
cross-roads, little squares, all of them white, on whitened sands,
beneath a white moon. . . . But there is no electricity in this town, no
lights, and nobody is stirring; doors and windows are shut: no movement
of any kind, and the silence, at first, is like that of the surrounding
desert. It is a town in which the half-light of the moon, amongst so
much vague whiteness, is diffused in such a way that it seems to come
from all sides at once and things cast no shadows which might give them
definiteness; a town where the soil is so yielding that our progress
is weakened and retarded, as in dreams. It seems unreal; and, in
penetrating farther into it, a sense of fear comes over you that can
neither be dismissed nor defined.

For assuredly this is no ordinary town. . . . And yet the houses,
with their windows barred like those of a harem, are in no way
singular--except that they are shut and silent. It is all this
whiteness, perhaps, which freezes us. And then, too, the silence is
not, in fact, like that of the desert, which did at least seem natural,
inasmuch as there was nothing there; here, on the contrary, there is
a sense of innumerable presences, which shrink away as you pass but
nevertheless continue to watch attentively. . . . We pass mosques in