Waves of sand and snow and the eddies which make them . rnoon of the first day there was aslight haze in the air due to suspended sand. Iwas struck next morning by the changed appear-ance of the scene. There was no haze in thelight of early day, but, on the contrary, an atlmo-sphere of singular clearness. The steep slopes,the sharp aretes, and the pyramidal peaks of thesand-dunes stood out with an intensity of lightand shadow which, combined with uniformity oftint, was more like lunar scenery as viewed witha telescope than any terrestrial landscape which Ihad hitherto seen. The slopes of the d
Waves of sand and snow and the eddies which make them . rnoon of the first day there was aslight haze in the air due to suspended sand. Iwas struck next morning by the changed appear-ance of the scene. There was no haze in thelight of early day, but, on the contrary, an atlmo-sphere of singular clearness. The steep slopes,the sharp aretes, and the pyramidal peaks of thesand-dunes stood out with an intensity of lightand shadow which, combined with uniformity oftint, was more like lunar scenery as viewed witha telescope than any terrestrial landscape which Ihad hitherto seen. The slopes of the dunes weresmooth and unspotted, and in the absence of detailor of objects of known size there was nothing toprovide a scale of magnitude. With a low sun,which threw long, dark shadows, the dunes, withtheir bold, mountainous forms, loomed immense,and an unbiased observer might easily have sup-posed their height to be thousands of feet insteadof one or two hundred. On the second day I camped on a plateau ofpure sand some 40 feet above a depression, where. Plate 8.—Sand-dune encroaching on a plantation at Ismailia.
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, bookidwavesofs, booksubjectwaves
