As just now in the town of the dead, it is diffused on all sides and gives even to the most massive objects the transparent semblance of unreality.

But nevertheless it shows their detail and leaves them something of their daylight colouring, so that all these funeral domes, raised on the ruins of the mosques, which serve them as pedestals, have preserved their reddish or brown colours, although the sand which separates them, and makes between the tombs of the different sultans little dead solitudes, remains pale and wan.
And meanwhile our carriage, proceeding always without noise, traces on this same sand little furrows which the wind will have effaced by to-morrow.

There are no roads of any kind; they would indeed be as useless as they are impossible to make.

You may pass here where you like, and fancy yourself far away from any place inhabited by living beings.

The great town, which we know to be so close, appears from time to time, thanks to the undulations of the ground, as a mere phosphorescence, a reflection of its myriad electric lights.