Journeys Through
Barren Lands
discovered by LEVI STAHL;
illustrations by AURORA ANDREWS, ANGELA DOMINGUEZ, ELI HARRIS & PETE WATTS
From Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Meccah (1855-56), by Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton
Illustration by Pete Watts
In the desert, even more than upon the ocean, there is present death: hardship is there, and piracies, and shipwreck, solitary, not in crowds, where, as the Persians say, “Death is a Festival”;—and this sense of danger, never absent, invests the scene of travel with an interest not its own.
Let the traveller who suspects exaggeration leave the Suez Road for an hour or two, and gallop northwards over the sands: in the drear silence, the solitude, and the fantastic desolation of the place, he will feel what the Desert may be. (149)
