"A change, at last, came over our torments; the time arrived for continuing our journey. We mounted our dromedaries like listless and unwilling criminals, indifferent as to the route we were to pursue. We were certain that it must be forward in some direction, and that was all. I merely asked if we should have fresh water that evening; and Araballah, who was near me, replied that the spot of our intended halt was near a well.
"The sleeplessness of the past night, my abstinence from food, and the state of fusion I had been in for some time, combined, now, to produce an irresistible drowsiness. I at first opposed to it the idea of danger; a fall of fifteen feet, although on the sand, had no attraction in it. But the fear of this mischance soon grew indistinct. A hallucination took possession of me. My eyes were closed; yet I saw the sun, the sand, and the dusty air, only they were changed in color, and took strange and variable hues. I then imagined myself in a vessel rocked by the surges of the ocean. Suddenly, I dreamed that I had fallen from my dromedary, which, however, continued its course. I tried to call out to my companions, but my voice failed, and the caravan went on. I strove to pursue, but could not keep my feet in the sandy waves; they overwhelmed and nearly drowned me. I endeavored to swim, but I had forgotten the necessary motions. Over this vision of frenzy, came recollections of my childhood, that for twenty years had been buried in oblivion. I heard the murmur of a pleasant brook gliding through my father’s garden. I threw myself under the shade of a chestnut-tree, planted on the day of my birth, How I could simultaneously and interchangeably experience these conflicting visions, I have no power to imagine: the one factitious, that of water and shade; the other real, that of thirsting, parching, suffocating. But I was so bewildered that I did not know which of the two was a dream. Presently, a violent blow in my breast or back awakened me; it was a thump from my saddle, that warned me I had, in truth, nearly lost my equilibrium. I opened my eyes with a start of terror: the garden, the brook, the tree, and the shade had vanished: but the sun, the wind, the sand, the desert, in short, remained.
"Hours passed in this manner, but I took no note and had no notion of the time. At length all motion ceased: and, arousing myself once more from my drowsiness, I saw that the caravan had stopped. The whole of the Arabs were grouped around Toualeb; we three remained just where our camels had pleased to Ralt. I made a sign to Mohammed: he came to me, and I inquired why the Arabs stopped and looked about them so irresolutely. I found from his answer that 'The Bewildering Valley' maintained its reputation, and our men had lost their way."
The forcible picture which succeeds, of the joy that is felt in obtaining an unex- pected supply of the most indispensable of life’s necessaries, in ‘a dry and thirsty land, where no water is,’ although in type, we are reluctantly compelled to omit. The copious extracts which we have heretofore presented, from travels in the same regions, to say nothing of a plentiful lack of space, must constitute our apology with the reader, for limiting our quotations to this little measure ; but the book itself, and a handsome one it is, is extant; and we therefore cordially commend the reader to the fountain head.
Public and Private Economy. Illustrated by Observations made in England, in the year 1836. By Theodore Sedgwick. Part Third. In one volume. pp. 156. New-York: Harper and Brothers.
We have heretofore adverted to the entertaining, not less than instructive, works which have preceded the present, by the same author, and having in view the same leading inculcations. Mr. Sedgwick is a clear, vigorous thinker; an acute, and we may add minute, observer; and a very plain, straight-forward, agreeable writer. In these respects, he more nearly resembles Cobbett, than any native or foreign author whom we can call to mind. The volume before us is devoted to the thousand objects of curiosity or admiration, which arrest the attention of a stranger in England, especially an American. Frequent comparisons between the two countries are instituted; and the contrasts of good and evil; of improvement and the lack of it; of domestic uses and abuses; of social merits and defects, afford the author a wide