Desert Sentence Examples

The desert night was cold and dark.

She turned away from the desert and crossed her arms.

A chill descended over the desert compound as the sun set.

She trailed, stepping into the chilled desert night.

The landing overlooked the parched desert surrounding the black fortress.

If you are in a desert dying of thirst, you value the first glass of water very highly, the second glass a bit less, and the 802nd not at all.

They were in the middle of the desert in New Mexico.

The sun peeked over the desert horizon to the east.

Standing in the desert sun, he couldn't help thinking she wasn't beyond his reach anymore.

The desert heat couldn't reach her private cloud.

The moons hung well above the horizon, and the desert air was chilly enough for her to see her breath.

Beyond where the compound ended, she saw the tan sands of the desert punctuated by short, round shrubs It's called Traveling.

The dry desert heat gave way to cool sea breeze, and a massive apple tree protected her from the sun overhead.

Apparently scrounging food off the desert wasn't nearly as easy as harnessing a team of mules.

His eyes traveled from the desert to the sky.

When assured she'd follow, he released her and marched on into the desert, away from the mountain.

Were the Indians waiting in desert ahead?

But it would be hot as hell crossing the desert in Utah and Nevada.

The desert around him was quiet and the sky overhead clear.

The long ordeal in the desert was over, but what waited for her now was uncertain.

Any thought she had of trying to make it here faded whenever she saw the desert or thought about how Darkyn manipulated her.

Not that she was likely to see him again - especially out here in the desert, hundreds of miles from their little Texas ranch.

The desert was flat, the rock formations and canyons plentiful.

Some of the best restaurants for outdoor enthusiasts are here, as the beach and mountains are side by side with the desert not too far away.

Menu items vary, but typical items include exotic salads, several meat entrees and a couple desert choices that incorporate local fruit.

The Frenchman had materialized from the desert on his bay.

He looked around and found a familiar dirt trail that led to a large rock overlooking the desert he'd sat on earlier to watch the sunset.

She stood on a covered landing of a fortress made of black stones overlooking a parched desert beneath dual suns too faded to provide anything other than indirect light.

Her gaze turned to the desert.

The city lies where the desert meets the mountains, with many hiking, mountain biking, golfing and river rafting opportunities.

By the time she reached the wagon, the desert was bathed in moonlight.

On either side of the river valley a steppe-like desert, covered in the spring with verdure, the rest of the year barren and brown, stretches away as far as the eye can see.

The mules were lathered - a condition that could be dangerous in the desert.

I know we'll probably never learn the answer, but I still can't fathom what could have happened back in Boston to make Annie Quincy desert a comfortable life.

He opened his eyes to find them off a dirt road in the high desert somewhere.

The heat of the desert disappeared as he dropped through the portal to the immortal world.

Near the desert gateway between worlds, Darian found his rhythm.

His power swelled, until dark clouds blocked the desert sun.

The ground dropped out from under her, and she landed in the desert on her belly.

Darian watched the sky turn from dark to dawn, unconcerned with the chilly desert morning.

Unfortunately, the southern routes ran into the desert, and the armies were too far to return in enough time to stave off any attack Memon planned in the next fortnight.

Even in the desert the heat had not been so oppressive... and one day it had reached over a hundred.

Below this point the back country on the Syrian side has always been a complete desert.

The region of the Colorado river is largely desert, with occasional buttes and spurs.

Invectivarum in Hieronymum Libri II; (4) Apologia pro Fide Sua ad Anastasium Pontificem; (5) Historia Eremitica - consisting of the lives of thirty-three monks of the Nitrian desert; 1 (6) Expositio Symboli, a commentary on the creed of Aquileia comparing it with that of Rome, which is valuable for its evidence as to church teaching in the 4th century.

To their south lies the Saharan desert.

Within the limits indicated the country consists mainly of sandy desert and rugged and arid steppes and plateaus through which the Nile forces its way to Upper Egypt.

This canal flows through land that in 1889 was practically desert.

At the age of forty, when the leading man in Siena, he retired along with two companions to live a hermit's life at Accona, a desert place fifteen miles to the south of Siena, 1313.

He commanded the advanced guard of General Lomakine's column from Kinderly Bay, in the Caspian, to join General Verefkin, from Orenburg, in the expedition to Khiva in 1874, and, after great suffering on the desert march, took a prominent part in the capture of the Khivan capital.

On the opposite (west) bank of the Nile is the village of Metemma, whence there is a caravan route across the Bayuda Desert to the Merawi (Merowe) by Jebel Barkal; this was the route followed by the desert column under Sir Herbert Stewart in 1884 in the Gordon relief expedition.

Under him the Murabtis soon began to spread their power beyond the desert, and subjected the tribes of the Atlas.

The superficial sands of the desert region, derived in large part from the disintegration of the Nubian Sandstone, occupy the most extensive areas in the Libyan Desert.

The other desert regions of Egypt are elevated stony plateaus, which are diversified by extensively excavated valleys and oases, and in which sand frequently plays quite a subordinate part.

Many of the Egyptian rocks in the desert areas and at the cataracts are coated with a highly polished film, of almost microscopic thinness, consisting chiefly of oxides of iron and manganese with salts of magnesia and lime.

Nitrates and phosphates are also found in various parts of the desert and are used as manures.

Farther south the range of temperature becomes greater as pure desert conditions are reached.

In the open desert rain falls even more rarely, but it is by no means unknown, and from time to time heavy storms burst, causing sudden floods in the narrow ravines, and drowning both men and animals These are more common in the mountainous region of the Sinai peninsula, where they are much dreaded by the Arabs.

This is especially the case where there is also shade to protect them from the midday sun, as in some of the narrow ravines in the eastern desert and in the palm groves of the oases, where various ferns and flowers grow luxuriantly round the springs.

The desert hare is abundant in parts of the Fayum, and a wild cat, or lynx, frequents the marshy regions of the Delta.

Red-legged and other partridges are found in the eastern desert and the Sinai hills.

In the desert, at a very short distance from the cultivable land, the climate is uniformly dry and unvaryingly healthy.

The monasteries, or ders, are generally fort-like buildings and are often built in the desert.

He was no greenhorn, but what was he doing in the desert?

The desert and lava fields behind them, they made good time.

Today, she had left, because the idea of eternity in the red desert with a creature incapable of caring for her was too much for her to bear.

The question how far connexion was kept up between early Egypt and Babylonia by way of the Red Sea or across the desert is a very interesting one.

Now the protection of the Church had always been regarded as one of the chief functions of the emperors; Charles could not, therefore, desert it when it was so greatly in need of his services.

From the remains of fortifications there he argues that the Hyksos were uncivilized desert people, skilled in the use of the bow, and must thus have destroyed by their archery the Egyptian armies trained to fight hand-tohand; further;, that their hordes were centered in Syria, but were driven thence by a superior force in the East to take refuge in the islands and became a sea-power--whence the strange description "Hellenic" in Manetho, which most editors have corrected to CtXAoi, "others."

The most suitable places for the residence of invalids are Helwan, where there are natural mineral springs, in the desert, 14 m.

The barley in general is not of good quality, but the desert or Mariut barley, grown by the Bedouins in the coast region west of Alexandria, is highly prized for the making of beer.

Domestic A nimals.-The Egyptians are not particularly a pastora people, though the wealth of the Bedouin in the Eastern or Arabia, i Desert consists in their camels, horses, sheep and goats.

If the desert regions be excluded, the population of Egypt is extremely dense, being about 939 per sq.

On the 7th of August 1897 Colonel Hunter surprised and annihilated a weak Dervish garrison at Abu Hamed, to which place, by the 31st of October 1897, a railway had been laid across the Nubian desert from Wadi Haifa, a distance of 230 m., the record construction of 5300 yds surveyed, embanked and laid in one day having been attained.

The desert was full of wild life, the balance of nature being preserved by the carnivorous animals preying on the herbivorous; trees watered by soakage from the Nile protected the undergrowth and encouraged occasional rainfall.

Stone arrow-heads are common on the surface of the desert.

The ordinary beast of burden, even in the desert, was the ass.

In the Ptolernaic period it was used for desert transport and gradually became common.

By preference they were built in the Western desert, the Amente, near the place where the sun was seen to go to rest, and which seemed the natural entrance to the nether world.

On the surface of the desert, at the borders of the valley, palaeolithic implements of well-defined form are not uncommon, and bear the marks of a remote antiquity.

His monuments are widespread in Egypt, the quarries and mines in the desert as far as Sinai bear witness to his great activity, and we know of an expedition which he made against the Nubians.

In the east, Persis proper is separated by a desert (Laristan) from the fertile province of Carmania (Kerman), a mountainous region inhabited by a Persian tribe.

Sahel thus understood comprises regions which form the inter mediate zone between the fertile lands of the Sudan and the desert.

For alabaster the principal quarry was that of Hanub in the desert 10 m.

After this he revisited Syria and Asia Minor, and crossed the Black sea, the desert from Astrakhan to Bokhara, and the Hindu Kush.

But a romantic interest attaches to the wreck of the " Wager," one of Anson's fleet, on a desert island near Chiloe, for it bore fruit in the charming narrative of Captain John Byron, which will endure for all time.

A sandy beach or desert owes its character to the mobility of its constituent sand-grains, which are readily drifted and piled up in the form of dunes.

A snow-capped mountain ridge or an arid desert forms a barrier between different forms of life which is often more effective than an equal breadth of sea.

These pass imperceptibly into - (5) the arid desert, where rainfall is at a minimum, and the only plants are those modified to subsist with the smallest supply of water.

The whole country was reduced to a desert, Susa was plundered and razed to the ground, the royal sepulchres were desecrated, and the images of the gods and of 32 kings "in silver, gold, bronze and alabaster," were carried away.

He passed the remainder of his life at Wittenberg, braving the perils of war and persecution rather than desert the place dear to him as the home of the Reformation.

Anciently the country on both sides of the Euphrates was habitable as far as the river Khabur; at the present time it is all desert from Birejik downward, the camping ground of Bedouin Arabs, the great tribe of Anazeh occupying esh-Sham, the right bank, and the Shammar the left bank, Mesopotamia of the Romans, now called elJezireh or the island.

The first of these canals, taken off on the right bank of the river a little below Hit, followed the extreme skirt of the alluvium the whole way to the Persian Gulf near Basra, and thus formed an outer barrier, strengthened at intervals with watch-towers and fortified posts, to protect the cultivated land of the Sawad against the incursions of the desert Arabs.

A broad depression - the Aral-Caspian desert - has arisen where the plateau formation reaches its greatest altitude, and at the same time suddenly changes its direction from N.W.

Finally, in the S.E., towards the Caspian, on the slopes of the southern Urals and the plateau of Obshchiy Syrt, as also in the interior of the Crimea, and in several parts of Bessarabia, there are large tracts of real desert, buried under coarse sand and devoid of vegetation.

The most famous Arsaces was the chief of the Parni, one of the nomadic Scythian or Dahan tribes in the desert east of the Caspian Sea.

In the desert he was worshipped as an atmospheric deity, who manifested himself in thunder and lightning, whose abode was in the sky, whose sanctuary was on the mountain summit of Horeb-Sinai, and whose movable palladium was the ark of the covenant.

With the exception of the alkali flats, no portion of the desert is devoid of vegetation, even in the driest seasons.

Until the completion of the trans-continental railway in 1869, wagon trains were the only means of transporting the products of the mines across the desert.

It crosses a section that is mostly desert, but is connected with the Bullfrog District by the Las Vegas & Tonopah, which runs from Goldfield through Beatty and Rhyolite, and meets the San Pedro, Los Angeles & Salt Lake at Las Vegas.

In company with Germanus he visited Egypt, and dwelt for several years among the ascetics of the desert near the banks of the Nile.

The famous city, within easy reach of the southern desert and central Palestine (to Hebron and to Samaria the distances are about 18 and 35 miles respectively), had already entered into Palestinian history in the " Amarna " age (§ 3).

A defensive coalition was formed in which the kings of Cilicia, Hamath, the Phoenician coast, Damascus and Ammon, the Arabs of the Syrian desert, and " Ahabbu Sinai " were concerned.

Among those who paid tribute were Rasun (the biblical Rezin) of Damascus, Menahem of Samaria, the kings of Tyre, Byblos and Hamath and the queen of Aribi (Arabia, the Syrian desert).

The disorganized state of Egypt and the uncertain allegiance of the desert tribes left Judah without direct aid; on the other hand, opposition to Assyria among the conflicting interests of Palestine and Syria was rarely unanimous.

A number of petty peoples, of whom little definite is known, fringed Palestine from the south of Judah and the Delta to the Syrian desert.

The desert peoples who paid tribute on this occasion still continued restless, and in 715 Sargon removed men of Tamud, Ibadid, Marsiman, I;Iayapa, " the remote Arabs of the desert," and placed them in the land of Beth-Omri.

If Judah was compelled to take part in the Assyrian campaigns against Egypt, Arabia (the Syrian desert) and Tyre, this would only be in accordance with a vassal's duty.

Dreams of political freedom gave place to hopes of religious independence, and " Israel " became a church, the foundation of which it sought in the desert of Sinai a thousand years before.

Wizards and impostors persuaded the multitude to follow them into the desert, and an Egyptian, claiming to be a prophet, led his followers to the Mount of Olives to see the walls of Jerusalem fall at his command.

He also had to deal with a wizard, who deceived many by promising them salvation and release from evils, if they would follow him into the desert.

In the neighbourhood are remains of Coptic buildings, including a subterranean church (discovered 1895) in the desert half a mile beyond the limits of cultivation.

Starting from the Amur river and reaching along the eastern margin of the Gobi desert towards the sources of the Hwangho, it merges into the Altyn-tagh and the Kuen-lun, forming the northern face of the vast Tibetan highlands which are bounded on the south by the Himalaya.

The kavirs, or salt depressions, of the Persian desert are more frequently widespread deposits of mud and salt than water-covered areas.

The extreme rigour of the climate of Tibet, which combines great cold with great drought, makes the country essentially very poor, and the chief portion of it little better than desert.

The western part of the range, which received the name of Paropamisus Mons from the ancients, diminishes in height west of the 65th meridian and constitutes the northern face of the Afghan and Persian plateau, rising abruptly from the plains of the Turkoman desert, which lies between the Oxus and the Caspian.

The area between the northern border of the Persian high lands and the Caspian and Aral Seas is a nearly desert low-lying plain, extending to the foot of the north - western extremity of the great Tibeto-Himalayan mountains, and prolonged east- Trans- ward up the valleys of the Oxus (Amu-Darya) and Caspian Jaxartes (Syr-Darya), and northward across the country re ior, and of the Kirghiz to the south-western border of Siberia.

From it the Oxus, or Amu, flows off to the west, and the Jaxartes, or Syr, to the north, through the Turki state of Khokand, while to the east the waters run down past Kashgar to the central desert of the Gobi, uniting with the streams from the northern slope of the Tibetan plateau that traverse the principalities of Yarkand and Khotan, which are also Turki.

The central area bounded on the north and north-west by the Yablonoi Mountains and their western extension in the Tian-shan, on the south by the northern face of the Tibetan plateau, and on the east by the Khingan range before alluded to, forms the great desert of central Asia, known as the Gobi.

It appears likely that no part of this great central Asiatic desert is less than 2000 ft.

The more northern parts of Mongolia are between 4000 and 6000 ft., and no portion of the route across the desert between the Chinese frontier and Kiakhta is below 3000 ft.

In 1871-1873 the great Russian explorer, Nicolai Prjevalsky, crossed the Gobi desert from the north to Kansu in western China.

He crossed, and named, the Dzungarian extension of the Gobi desert, and then traversed the Gobi itself from Hami to Sachu, which became a point of junction between his journeys and those of Krishna.

The great central depression of the continent which reaches from the foot of the Pamir plateau on the west through the Tarim desert to Lop Nor and the Gobi has yielded up many interesting Chinese secrets.

In the restoration of the outlines of ancient and medieval geography in Asia Sven Hedin's discoveries of the actual remains of cities which have long been buried under the advancing waves of sand in the Takla Makan desert, cities which flourished in the comparatively recent period of Buddhist ascendancy in High Asia, is of the very highest interest, filling up a blank in the identification of sites mentioned by early geographers and illustrating more fully the course of old pilgrim routes.

Eastwards of this the great Kashgar depression, which includes the Tarim desert, separates Russia from the vast sterile highlands of Tibet; and a continuous series of desert spaces of low elevation, marking the limits of a primeval inland sea from the Sarikol meridional watershed to the Khingan mountains on the western borders of Manchuria, divide her from the northern provinces of China.

E Arabian Sea Ba Of G A L e Geological information incomplete Desert Deposits Quaternary Tertiary Mesozoic Palaeozoic Archaean and Metamorphic Younger Volcanic Rocks English Miles b iuHi iiiiuiiiiii after llargl,aua Geology The geology of Asia is so complex and over wide areas so little known that it is difficult to give a connected account of either the structure or the development of the continent, and only the broader features can be dealt with here.

The extremely dry and hot tracts which constitute an almost unbroken desert from Arabia, through south Persia and Baluchistan, to Sind, are characterized by considerable uniformity in the types of life, which closely approach to those of the neighbouring hot and dry regions of Africa.

Where the lowlands are highly cultivated they are adorned with planted wood, and where they are cut off from rain they are nearly completely desert.

Many species produce gums and resins, their stems being encrusted with the exudations, and pungency and aromatic odour is an almost universal quality of the plants of desert regions.

The extreme south-west part of the continent constitutes a separate zoological district, comprising Arabia, Palestine and southern Persia, and reaching, like the hot desert botanical tract, to Baluchistan and Sind; it belongs to what Dr Sclater calls the Ethiopian region, which extends over Africa, south of the Atlas.

The Ethiopian fauna plays but a subordinate part in Asia, intruding only into the south-western corner, and occupying the desert districts of Arabia and Syria, although some of the characteristic species reach still farther into Persia and Sind, and even into western India.

From the river Sutlej and the borders of the Sind desert, as far as Burma and to Ceylon, the religion of the great bulk of the people of India is Hindu or Brahminical, though the Mahommedans are often numerous, and in some places even in a majority.

West of the Indus the dialects approach more to Persian, which language meets Arabic and Turki west of the Tigris, and along the Turkoman desert and the Caspian.

David's good fortune did not desert him; he won his wife, and in this new advancement continued to grow in the popular favour, and to gain fresh laurels in the field.

He first settled in Egypt, hearing the lectures of Didymus, the Origenistic head of the catechetical school at Alexandria, and also cultivating friendly relations with Macarius the elder and other ascetics in the desert.

The utter exhaustion of his people in the course of a hopeless struggle with Holland, France and England was seen by him with sympathy, but he considered it an unavoidable misfortune and not the result of his own errors, since he could not be expected to renounce his rights or to desert the cause of God and the Church.

They are all desert animals.

This phenomenon occurs among species found at high elevations, among others found in arid or desert regions, and in some cases in the female sex only, the male being winged and the female wingless.

Their caravans (auvoeiac) travelled right across the desert to the great entrepots on the Euphrates, Vologesias, about 55 m.

To the east of the Dead Sea, again, lay a second strip of territory, in which the great fortress was Krak (Kerak) of the Desert, planted somewhere about 1140 by the royal butler, Paganus, in the reign of Fulk of Jerusalem.

The northern limit is the Tauric system of mountains, and the southern limit the edge of the Sinaitic desert.

The Pliocene deposits are not very widely spread and are generally of fresh-water origin excepting near the coast, but marine Pliocene beds have been found at el Forklus in the Palmyra desert.

The sky is continuously cloudless from the beginning of May till about the end of October; during the summer months the nights as a rule are dewy, except in the desert.

On the fall of Abu Abdallah Ibn Khaldun raised a large force amongst the desert Arabs, and entered the service of the sultan of Tlemcen.

Planting crosses in the open fields he drew the people to desert the churches, and had won a great following throughout all Neustria.

In later days, in the time of the Sargonid kings of Akkad or the monarchs of Ur, stones such is granite, basalt, diorite and dolerite were probably brought from the Sinaitic peninsula, if not from the western desert of Egypt, if the Red Sea coast is to be identified, as seems very probable, with Magan, " the place to which ships went," the land whence the Babylonians got some of their first stones for sculpture and architecture.

The empire included large tracts of mountain or desert, inhabited by tribes, which the Persian government had never subdued.

The Balkan hill-peoples of Illyrian or Thracian stock, the hill-peoples of Asia Minor and Iran, the chivalry of Media and Bactria, the mounted bowmen of the Caspian steppes, the camel-riders of the Arabian desert, could all be turned to account.

In the Turin Museum are preserved two papyri with rough drawings of gold mines established by Sesostris in the Nubian Desert.'

After ten years of fighting, Humayun was driven out of India and compelled to flee to Persia through the desert of Sind, where his famous son, Akbar the Great, was born in the petty fort of Umarkot (1542).

The regular Peninsular & Oriental steamer service began a few years later, and in 1857 a railway was opened from Cairo through the desert.

The state owes to this ruler the opening up of new railways across the great desert, which was formerly passable only by camels, and the tapping of the valuable coal deposits that occur in the territory.

In the sandy part of the desert beyond this strip of fertility both men and beasts, leaving the beaten path, sink as if in loose snow.

In those parts of the desert which have a hard level soil of clay, a few stunted mimosas, acacias and other shrubs are produced, together with rue, various bitter and aromatic plants, and occasionally tufts of grass.

Much of the soil of the desert appears to be alluvial; there are numerous traces of streams having formerly passed over it, and still, where irrigation is at all practicable, fertility in the clayey tract follows; but the rains are scanty, the wells few and generally 100 ft.

It has a magnificent palace, which is visible from far across the Bikanir desert; it was built in 1882 by Nawab Sadik Mahommed Khan.

These poljes may be described as oases in what is otherwise a desert expanse of mountains.

The new grand vizier, Cicala, by his severity to the soldiers, mainly Asiatics, who had shown cowardice in the battle, drove thousands to desert; and the sultan, who had himself little stomach for the perils of campaigning, returned to Constantinople, leaving the conduct of the war to his generals.

Russia, however, retained the fortresses of Kerch, Yenikale and Kinburn, with the desert country between the Bug and the Dnieper, while Ochakov was left to the Turks.

At such times a large part of the population leaves the city and encamps in the desert northward.

Formerly the British government maintained a camel-post across the desert to Damascus.

Almost equally conspicuous, and a landmark through the whole region, is the ruin called Akerkuf, in the desert, about 9 m.

With the exception of the Dra'a, the streams rising on the side of the range facing the Sahara do not reach the sea, but form marshes or lagoons at one season, and at another are lost in the dry soil of the desert.

In the Saharan Atlas the passes leading to or from the desert are numerous, and in most instances easy.

Such a range is elsewhere found only in deserts, but the surface of the inland ice may be considered to be an elevated desert of snow.'

It is situated in a malarious, almost desert plain, 9 m.

After three days at sea the traders landed, possibly on the west coast of Gaul, and journeyed for twenty-eight days through a desert.

As the Gobi desert is approached the forests disappear, the ground becomes covered chiefly with dry Gramineae, and Salsolaceae make their appearance.

Regular postal communication is maintained by the Russians between Kiakhta and Kalgan (close by Peking) across the desert of Gobi.

He took Barcelona from the Saracens in 803, and in the next year founded the monastery of Gellone (now Saint Guilhem-le Desert), of which he became a member in 806.

But he lost his way in the eastern desert and perished with his whole army (484).

Copiapo is perhaps the best built and most attractive of the desert region cities.

Beyond the small fertile valley in which it stands is the barren desert, on which rain rarely falls and which has no economic value apart from its minerals (especially saline compounds).

The military posts were drawn up in echelon along the frontier of the desert, especially along the southern slopes of the Aures, as far as Ad Majores (Besseriani), and on the Tripolitan frontier as far as Cydamus (Ghadames), forming an immense arc extending from Cyrenaica to Mauretania.

Through or near this gap flow northwards in parallel courses the rivers Heri-rud (Tejend) and Murghab, until they lose themselves in the desert of Kara-kum.

The Brazilian Guiana plateau, lying immediately north of the equator, is in great part a hot, stony desert.

Inner Mongolia, lying between the desert of Gobi, China proper and Manchuria, is divided into 24 aimaks.

After losing many men the Great King comes back to the place where he crossed the Danube, finds the Ionians still guarding the bridge in spite of the attempts of the Scyths to make them desert, and safely re-enters his own dominions.

Then, having spent three years in the desert with the hermit Banus, who was presumably an Essene, he became a Pharisee.

The air is unusually dry, owing to the proximity of the Kalahari Desert on the west and to the interception on the east by the Drakensberg of the moisture bearing clouds from the Indian Ocean.

It exports iodine and immense quantities of nitrate of soda obtained from the desert region of the province.

Its name is said to be a corruption of the Latin desertum, " a desert," which was applied to a cave on the seashore occupied by St Serf.

The end of the war found the llanos a desert, both herds and herdsmen having nearly disappeared.

The marshes in the south like the adjoining desert were frequented by Aramaic tribes; of these the most famous were the Kalda or Chaldaeans who under Merodach-baladan made themselves masters of Babylon and gave their name in later days to the whole population of the country.

Hence the centre of attraction was now the city with its interests, not the desert.

There is no middle course of farming in Egypt between irrigation and desert.

As for the electors, they had the strongest possible motive forresisting the papal claim, because if this were once admitted they would quickly lose their grcrwing importance in the state, Lastly, the cities which had stood behind the Empire in the most difficult crises of its contest with Rome were not likely to desert it now.

Hunting, Fishing, &c.In the desert hunting was carried on by hunters with bows and arrows, dogs and nets to check the game.

First is the long extension from Kalat, southwards, of that inconceivably wild highland country which faces the desert of Sind, the foot of which forms the Indian frontier.

The boundary between Baluchistan and Afghanistan, starting from Nushki, cuts across the Lora hamun, leaving the frontier post of Chagai to Baluchistan, and from this point to the Malik Siah Koh it is based partly on the central moun tainous water-divide already referred to, and partly runs in straight lines through the desert south of the salt swamps of the Gaud-i-Zirreh.

Palgrave says little of the desert part of the journey or of its Bedouin inhabitants, but much of the fertility of the oases and of the civility of the townsmen; and like other travellers in Nejd he speaks with enthusiasm of its bright, exhilarating climate.

Charles Doughty, the next Englishman to visit northern Arabia, though he covered little new ground, saw more of the desert life, and has described it more minutely and Doughty.

Having successfully completed his investigations and sent copies of inscriptions and drawings of the tombs to Renan in Paris, he determined to push on farther into the desert.

In his company the Blunts set out from Damascus, and travelled across the Syrian desert by the Wadi Sirhan to Jauf.

The vast extent of the Dahna, or great southern desert, covering perhaps 250,000 sq.

The rest of the northern borderland is covered by the Syrian desert, extending from the borders of Palestine to the edge of the Euphrates valley.

This tract, known as the Hamad, is a Syrian gravelly plain unbroken by any considerable range of hills desert.

The northern edge of this great desert follows.

Owing to the great extent of the Nafud desert, the formation of sand-dunes is exemplified on a proportionate scale.

Dawasir, it runs eastward till it disappears in the belt of sandy desert 100 m.

North of Katif it is desert and only inhabited by nomads; at Katif, however, and throughout the district to the south bordering on the Gulf of Bahrein there are ample supplies of underground water, welling up in abundant springs often at a high temperature, and bringing fertility to an extensive district of which El Hofuf, a town of 15,000 to 20,000 inhabitants, is the most important centre.

The lowland strip or Tehama consists partly of a gravelly plain, the Khabt, covered sparsely with acacia and other desert shrubs and trees, and furnishing pasturage for large flocks of goats and camels; and partly of sterile wastes of sand like the Ramla, which extends on either side of Aden almost from the seashore to the foot of the hills.

The Tehama is, however, by no means all desert, the mountain torrents where they debouch into the plain have formed considerable tracts of alluvial soil of the highest degree of fertility producing in that warm equable climate two and even three crops in the year.

Eastward the plateau becomes still more sterile, and its elevation probably falls more rapidly till it reaches the level of the Jauf and Nejran valleys on the borders of the desert.

The greater part of it is desert, but a short stretch lying between the 48th and 50th meridians is well watered and exceptionally fertile.

On the plateau, which has an altitude of 4000 ft., there is good pasturage; inland the country slopes gently to a broad valley beyond which the view was bounded by the level horizon of the desert.

West of Abu Dhabi a low flat steppe with no settled inhabitants extends up to the Katr peninsula, merging on the north into the saline marshes which border the Persian Gulf, and on the south into the desert.

The great desert known as the Dahna or the Rub`a el Khali (" the empty quarter ") is believed to cover all the interior of southern Arabia from the borders of Yemen in the west to those of Oman in the east.

Its northern fringe is no doubt frequented by the Bedouin tribes of southern Nejd after the rains, when its sands, like those of the northern desert, produce herbage; but towards the east, according to Burckhardt's information, it is quite without vegetation even in the winter and spring.

In the northern desert the temperature is subject to extreme variations.

Hares are numerous both in the desert and in cultivated tracts.

These are kept most of the year in the Nafud, five or ten days' march from Hail, where they find their own food on the desert herbage.

The great majority of the horses that come into the market as Arabs, are bred in the northern desert and in Mesopotamia, by the various sections of the Aneza and Shammar tribes, who emigrated from Nejd generations ago, taking with them the original Nejd stock.

In the spring when the succulent ashub and adar grow plentifully in the desert, they go for weeks without drinking.

This distinction between the characteristics of the two races is only true in a general sense, for a considerable population of true Bedouin origin has settled down to agricultural life in the oases of Hejaz and Nejd, while in southern Arabia the tribes dwelling on the fringe of the great desert have to a certain extent adopted the nomad life.

In the desert, too, there is a widely scattered tribe, the Salubi, which from its name (Salib, cross) is conjectured to be of early Christian origin; they are great hunters, killing ostriches and gazelles; the Arabs despise them as an inferior race, but do not harm them; they pay a small tax to the tribe under whose protection they live, and render service as labourers, for which they receive in the spring milk and cheese; at the date harvest they get wages in kind; with this, and the produce of the chase, they manage to exist in the desert without agriculture or flocks.

The road is a mere camel track across the desert, the chief places passed are Ma`an on the Syrian border, a station on the old Sabaean trade route to Petra, and Medain Salih, the site of the rock-cut tombs and inscriptions first brought to notice by Doughty.

The invasion under Aelius Gallus was an absolute failure, the expedition being betrayed by the guides and lost in the sands of the desert.

The kingdom of Hira (Hira) was established in the boundary land between the Euphrates and the Arabian desert, a district renowned for its good air and extr a ordinary fertility.

The Wahhabi empire had now attained its zenith, a settled government was established able to enforce law and order in the desert and in the towns, and a spirit of Arabian nationality had grown up which bade fair to extend the Wahhabi dominion over all the Arab race.

During the exile of the latter he steadily consolidated his power, extending his influence more especially over the desert tribes, till on Fesal's return in 1842 he had created a state subject only in name to that of which Riad was the capital.

Ahmad Feizi Pasha, in command of the Basra column, 4200 strong, crossed the desert and reached the wells of aina, 200 m.

Then he tells of his love and how he had suffered from it, how he had journeyed through the desert (this part often contains some of the most famous descriptions and praises of animals) until his beast became thin and worn-out.

The gasida still required the long introduction (see above), which was entirely occupied with the affairs of the desert.

His language has the purity of the desert, his morals are those of the city, his universalism is that of the man of the world.

The growth of city life in the Abbasid capital led to the desire for a new form of story, differing from the old tales of desert life.

It stands at the centre of the great S-shaped bend of the Nile, and from it the railway to Wadi Halfa strikes straight across the Nubian desert, a little west of the old caravan route to Korosko.

The town is named after a celebrated sheikh buried here, by whose tomb travellers crossing the desert used formerly to deposit all superfluous goods, the sanctity of the saint's tomb ensuring their safety.

Between those places the river makes a great S-shaped bend, the region west of the Nile within the lower bend being called the Bayuda Desert, and that east of the Nile the Nubian.

Their domain then began to be encroached upon from the east by the Blemmyes, who have been identified with the present Beja of the Nubian desert.

It stands on the eastern edge of the Syrian desert, on the north-eastern shore of a deep depression, formerly a sea, the Assyrium Stagnum of the old geographers, but in latter years drained and turned into gardens for the town.

Owing to climatic causes the tract they occupied was slowly drying up. They were the outposts of civilization towards the encroaching desert, and the Tatar nomadism that advanced with it.

Quite close to the sea, all along the coast from Hammamet to Sfax, there are great fertility and much cultivation; but a little distance inland the country has a rather wild and desolate aspect, though it is nowhere a desert until the latitude of Sfax has been passed.

This occupies the whole of the southern division of Tunisia, but although desert predominates, it is by no means all desert.

To the south of the Jerid the country is mainly desert - vast unexplored tracts of shifting sand, with rare oases.

On the whole its character is less Saharan than that of parts of Algeria, for the influences of the desert do not penetrate so far north in Tunisia as they do in Algeria.

In the extreme south, in the Sahara desert, the addax antelope is still found.

The coast, extending from the base of the Western or Maritime Cordillera to the Pacific Ocean, consists of a sandy desert crossed at intervals by rivers flowing through narrow, fertile valleys.

Sometimes, especially at early dawn, there is a musical noise in the desert, like the sound of distant drums, which is caused by the eddying of grains of sand in the heated atmosphere, on the crests of the medanos.

In a few hollows which are reached by moisture the trees of the desert find support, the algarrobo (Prosopis horrida), a low tree of very scraggy growth, the vichaya (Capparis crotonoides), and the zapote del perro (Colicodendrum scabridum), mere shrubs.

The valleys form a marvellous contrast to the surrounding desert.

The Santa and Nepena valleys are separated by a desert 8 leagues in width, on the shores of which there is a good anchorage in the bay of Ferrol, where the port of Chimbote is the terminus of a railway.

There are 9 leagues of desert between the Nepena and Casma, 16 between the Casma and Huarmey, and 18 between the Huarmey and Fortaleza.

The latter desert, much of which is loose sand, is called the Pampa de Mata Cavallos, from the number of exhausted animals which die there.

Between the Supe and Pativilca is the desert called the Pampa del Medio Mundo.

The valleys of Ica, Palpa, San Xavier and Nasca are rich and fertile, though they do not extend to the sea; but between Nasca and Acari there is a desert 60 m.

The Maritime Cordillera of Peru has no connexion with the coast ranges of Chile, but is a continuation of the Cordillera Occidental of Chile, which under various local names forms the eastern margin of the coastal desert belt from Atacama northward into Peru.

During colonial times and down to the middle of the 19th century pack animals were the only means of transportation across the desert and over the rough mountain trails.

Railway construction in Peru began in 1848 with a short line from Callao to Lima, but the building of railway lines across the desert to the inland towns of the fertile river valleys and the Andean foot-hills did not begin until twenty years later.

Sulphur deposits exist in the Sechura desert region, on the coast, and extensive borax deposits have been developed in the department of Arequipa.

Yahweh leads Israel through the desert in a pillar of cloud and fire; he kindles Elijah's altar by lightning, and translates the prophet in a chariot of fire.

She was attracted by what she had heard of the desert anchorites, and in 1363-1364, after much struggle, persuaded her parents to allow her to take the habit of the Dominican tertiaries.

The nitrate and borax deposits are extensive and productive, and common salt is a natural product of large areas in the elevated desert regions of the Andes.

In that year Chile decided to explore the desert coast, and in 1843 that part of the desert extending north to the 26th parallel was organized into the province of Atacama.

Crusoe's shipwreck and adventures, his finding the footprint in the sand, his man "Friday," - the whole atmosphere of romance which surrounds the position of the civilized man fending for himself on a desert island - these have made Defoe's great work an imperishable part of English literature.

The addax is a desert antelope, and in habits probably resembles the gemsbuck.

From Palestine Jerome and his companions went to Egypt, remaining some time in Alexandria, and they visited the convents of the Nitrian desert.

C. giganieus, the largest and most striking species of the genus, is a native of hot, arid, desert regions of New Mexico, growing there in rocky valleys and on mountain sides, where the tall stems with their erect branches have the appearance of telegraph poles.

On a visit home he converted his mother, but his zeal against the Arians roused persecution against him and for some time he lived an ascetic life on the desert island of Gallinaria near Genoa.

He attacked the desert city of Hatra, westward of the Tigris, whose importance is still attested by grand ruins.

The assertion of Mommsen that the Tigris was a more defensible frontier than the desert line which separated the Parthian from the Roman Empire can hardly be accepted.

Being well received by the Uighurs and other tribes west of the desert, subjects of his family, he gathered an army and commenced a course of conquest which eventually extended over eastern and western Turkestan.

The Gila Monster (Heloderma suspectum), a poisonous lizard, whose bite is injurious but rarely, if ever, fatal to man, also occurs in the desert regions.

He returned to his native place and for many years lived as a hermit in the desert by the marshes on the Egyptian border.

In Livy it signifies the oath (q.v.) which soldiers took among themselves not to run away or desert.

From it a road, provided with watering stations, leads north-west across the desert to the Nile at Coptos.

In German universities the townsfolk of Jaffa (Joppa) to the Egyptian desert south of Gaza (on the subsequent extension of the name in its Greek form Palaestina, see Palestine).

But the disturbances continued, and although desert tribes were removed and settled in Samaria in 715, Musri and Philistia were soon in arms again.

In contrast with the splendid fertility of Valencia or the south of France, the landscape of this region, like the rest of central Spain, seems almost a continuation of the north African desert area.

Gazelles (Gazella), which form by far the largest genus of the subfamily, are inhabitants of open and frequently more or less desert districts.

Phosphates occur also in Egypt, in the desert east of Keneh and in the Dakla oasis in the Libyan desert.

Jesus withdraws to the Judaean desert, but soon returns, six days before Passover, to Bethany; Mary anoints Him, a crowd comes to see Him and Lazarus, and the hierarchs then plan the killing of Lazarus also.

Two other accounts in Genesis, originally independent, give supplementary information drawn from the Sabaean colonies, the stations and factories established to facilitate trade through the desert.

The industry in comparison with former times, when the town had so considerable a manufacture in muslin as to give its name to that fabric, is very unimportant; trade also, which is almost exclusively in the hands of native merchants, has fallen off greatly, although the town remains the collecting and distributing centre for the north Mesopotamian desert and Kurdistan.

Through the valley runs the Khusp river, which loses itself in the desert towards the west; it is, however, generally dry.

Here also is the northern terminus of the caravan route across the desert, which, passing through the Kharga oasis, goes south-west to Darfur.

Yet even this intimate penetration into the modes of thought of the desert may be explained by prehistoric Indian communication.

He possessed, to an extraordinary degree, a power of getting into intimate association with the Arabs of the desert, such as has belonged to but one or two of his predecessors in Arabian travel, and he combined with this gift the soldier's instinct and a capacity for leadership which raised him at once to the first rank of commanders in desert warfare.

Female date-palms only were cultivated, and wild ones were brought from the desert in order to fertilize them.

But as each successive range, proceeding south, represents a higher step in the terraced ascent from the desert of Gobi to the plateau of Tibet, the ranges when viewed from the north frequently appear like veritable upstanding mountain ranges, and this appearance is accentuated by the general steepness of the ascent; whereas, when viewed on the other hand from the south, these several ranges, owing to their long and gentle slope in that direction, have the appearance of comparatively gentle swellings of the earth's service rather than of well-defined mountain ranges.

In the western parts of the system they mostly go to feed the Kara-muren or the Cherchen-darya, while farther east they flow down into some larger self-contained basin of internal drainage, such as the Achik-kol, the two lakes Kara-kol, or the Ghaz-kol, and even yet farther east make their way, some of them into the lakes of the Tsaidam depression or become lost in its sands or in those of the Kum-tagh desert on the north, or go to feed the headstreams of the great rivers, the Hwang-ho (Yellow River) and the Yangtsze-kiang (Blue River) in the south.

Whereas both the mountains and valleys of the Astintagh and of the Akato-tagh (the next large range to the Astin-tagh on the south) are arid and desolate in the extreme, smitten as it were with the desiccating breath of the desert, those of the Arka-tagh and beyond are supersaturated with moisture, so that, at any rate in summer, the surface is in many parts little better than a quaking quagmire.

The mother will defend her young with the utmost desperation against any assailant, and ha s p been known to sacrifice her own life rather than desert them.

Some of the plains afford good pasturage for camels, asses, goats and cattle; others are desert tablelands.

To the south of this variegated region lies a desert plateau, 2000 ft.

The sacrifices and offerings were acknowledgments of divine bounty and means used to insure its continuance; the Arab was the " slave " of his god and paid him tribute, as slaves used to do to their masters, or subjects to their lords; and the free Bedouin, trained in the solitude of the desert to habits of absolute self-reliance, knew no master except his god, and acknowledged no other will before which his own should bend.

But in the desert there is no king and no sovereignty save that of the divine oracle, and therefore it is from the soothsayers or ministers of the oracle that a public ministry of religion can most naturally spring.

Between May and September the sirocco, or hot wind of the desert, sweeps at intervals over the country, impregnating the air with fine sand; but in general, with the exception of the vicinity of the marshes, the climate is healthy.

Of birds, eagles, vultures, hawks, owls and quails are common; snipe, curlews, plovers, storks and herons frequent the marshy parts; and the ostrich the desert.

In the Saharan oases the characteristic tree is the date palm - " the king of the desert."

It has in the east the Karnap-chul steppe, covered with grass in early summer, and in the north an intrusion of the Kara-kum sand desert.

The Kashka-darya, which flows westwards out of the glaciers of Hazret-sultan (west of the Hissar range), supplies the Shahri-sabs (properly Shaarsabiz) oasis with water, but is lost in the desert to the west of Karshi.

The majority live on broken ground, with or without much vegetation; many are arboreal and many are true desert animals, while a few are more or less aquatic; one, the leguan of the Galapagos, Amblyrhynchus, even enters the sea.

This peculiar little inhabitant of the steppes and desert regions of Turkestan and Persia, by rubbing the imbricating scales upon each other, produces a shrill cricket-like noise, whilst sitting at night in front of its hole in the ground.

A peculiarly wedge-shaped snout, and toes provided with strong fringes, enable this animal to burrow rapidly in and under the sand of the desert.

The great Mapimi desert of western Coahuila is another lacustrine depression, but only marshy lagoons remain.

Then, there are the mangrove-fringed coasts and the dripping wooded slopes where rare orchids thrive, and above these, on the inland side of the sierra, a treeless, sun-scorched table-land where only the cactus, yucca, and other coarse vegetation of the desert can thrive without irrigation.

For this is he that vvas spoken of by Esay the Prophet, saying, A voyce of one crying in the desert, prepare ye the way of our Lord, make straight his pathes.

The western region, the Kalahari Desert, is mainly arid, with a sandy soil, and is covered in part by dense bush.

The rivers of Bechuanaland are, with few exceptions, intermittent or lose themselves in the desert.

The greater part of Bechuanaland is covered with superficial deposits consisting of the sands of the desert regions of the Kalahari and the alluvium and saliferous marls of the Okavango basin.

These deposits are held by Passarge to indicate Tertiary desert conditions, to which the basin of the Zambezi is slowly reverting.

In the Acta Archelai his first name is said to have been Cubricus, which Kessler explains as a corruption of Shuravik, a name common among the Arabs of the Syrian desert.

The Cordilleran system on the western side of the continent is lofty, broad and complicated, with heavy forests near the north-west coast, but elsewhere with trees only on the higher ranges below the Alpine region, and with treeless or desert intermont valleys, plateaus and basins, very arid in the south-west.

Many streams descend from the ravines only to wither away on the desert basin floors before uniting in a trunk river along the axis of a depression; others succeed in uniting in the winter season, when evaporation is much reduced, and then their trunk flows for a few score miles, only to disappear by sinking (evaporating) farther on.

The displacement of the mountain block may still be in progress, for severe earthquakes have happened in the depression next east of the range; that of Owens Valley in 1870 was strong enough to have been very destructive had there been anything in the desert valley to destroy.

Thus the heaviest measured rainfall east of the Mississippi is on the southern Appalachians; while in the west, where observations are as yet few at high level stations, the occurrence of forests and pastures on the higher slopes of mountains which rise from desert plains clearly testifies to the same rule.

The rainfall from the stromy westerly winds is largely deposited on the western slopes of the mountains near the Pacific coast, and arid or desert interior plains are thus found close to the great ocean.

Some of its characteristic mammals and birds are the long-eared desert fox, four-toed kangaroo rats, Sonoran pocket mice, big-eared and tiny white-haired bats, road runner, cactus wren, canyon wren, desert thrashers, hooded oriole, black-throated desert sparrow, Texas night-hawk and Gambels quail.

In one of these she seems to have crossed the frontier alone in disguise, been lost in the desert, and, after many adventures, been conducted back by a party of horsemen.

He, no doubt, like al-Asma`i and Abu `Ubaida, also himself visited the areas occupied by the tribes for their camping grounds in the neighbouring desert; and adjacent to Kufa was al-IIIra, the ancient capital of the Lakhmid kings, whose court was the most celebrated centre in pre-Islamic Arabia, where, in the century before the preaching of the Prophet, poets from the whole of the northern half of the peninsula were wont to assemble.

In some of the valleys having an outlet to the south the flora is partly peculiar to the American desert, and such species as Purshia tridentata, D.C., and Artemisia tridentata, Nutt., and species of Gilia, Aster and Erigonum are found that are not met with elsewhere.

The Medians too were subject to him as far as the Elburz and the central Iranian desert.

That the religious life of Israel as portrayed therein dates from this remote period cannot be maintained against the results of excavation or against the later history, nor can we picture a united people in the desert when subsequent vicissitudes represent the union as the work of many years, and show that it lasted for a short time only under David and Solomon.

On the south the limit was undefined, but understood to be the margin of the desert, some distance north of the oasis of Augila (Aujila).

The southward slopes fall through ever-thinning pasture lands to sheer desert about 80 m.

Jebel el-Akabah is much more barren than Jebel Akhdar, and the desert comes right down to the sea in Marmarica, whose few inhabitants are more concerned with salt-collecting and sponge fishing than with agriculture.

They spend their whole time buried in the hot desert sand, in which they construct burrows, throwing up at intervals small hillocks.