It was only the mirage that tantalizes travellers in these scorched valleys, all the long eight months of the rainless season.

It seemed beautiful at first, then monotonous; and long before the day was out we hated it with a most cordial and unaffected hatred.
Soon a new appearance attracted our attention.

First, clouds of dust, which gradually took a well-defined shape, and formed themselves into immense pillars, rapidly spinning round upon themselves, and travelling slowly about the plain.

At one place, where several smaller valleys opened upon us, these sand-pillars, some small, some large, were promenading about by dozens, looking much like the genie when the fisherman had just let him out of the bottle, and saw him with astonishment beginning to shape himself into a giant of monstrous size.
Indeed I doubt not that the story-teller was thinking of such sand-pillars when he wrote that wonderful description.

You may see them in the East by thousands.