uninhabitable by mortal man, save during that short period of the
year when the maidens in the sennhutt watch the cattle upon the
upland pastures. We must picture to ourselves mountains blazing day
after day, month after month, beneath the glorious sun and cloudless
sky, in an air so invigorating that the Arabs can still support life
there upon a few dates each day; and where, as has been said,--"Man
needs there hardly to eat, drink, or sleep, for the act of breathing
will give life enough;" an atmosphere of such telescopic clearness
as to explain many of the strange stories which have been lately
told of Antony's seemingly preternatural powers of vision; a
colouring, which, when painters dare to put it on canvas, seems to
our eyes, accustomed to the quiet greys and greens of England,
exaggerated and impossible--distant mountains, pink and lilac,
quivering in pale blue haze--vast sheets of yellow sand, across
which the lonely rock or a troop of wild asses or gazelles throw
intense blue-black shadows--rocks and cliffs not shrouded, as here,
in soil, much less in grass and trees, or spotted with lichens and
stained with veins; but keeping each stone its natural colour, as it
wastes--if, indeed, it wastes at all--under the action of the all
but rainless air, which has left the paintings on the old Egyptian
temples fresh and clear for thousands of years; rocks, orange and
purple, black, white, and yellow; and again and again beyond them
{131} glimpses, it may be, of the black Nile, and of the long green
garden of Egypt, and of the dark blue sea. The eastward view from
Antony's old home must be one of the most glorious in the world,
save for its want of verdure and of life. For Antony, as he looked
across the blue waters of the Gulf of Akaba, across which, far
above, the Israelites had passed in old times, could see the sacred
goal of their pilgrimage, the red granite peaks of Sinai, flaming
against the blue sky with that intensity of hue which is scarcely