The Ripley Transcript

The Simoon.--The following notice of the Simoon of the desert is furnished by a correspondent of the New York American:

"From the great insecurity of persons and property there is little travelling except in caravans. These frequently comprise 40,000 camels attended by thirty or forty thousand persons. Flying horsemen scouring the surrounding country at full speed secure them from sudden attack; but the chief danger they have to fear is the hot blast of the desert. Its approach is betokened by a lurid streak in the heavens such as may sometimes be seen in American sunsets. It is a sign well understood by the natives and they prepare for it immediately. It comes like the heated air from a fiery furnace suddenly opened producing faintness and lassitude; and soon increasing in violence, it raises the soft sand in clouds penetrating the eyes nose and mouth and insinuating itself beneath the garments. The camels are halted by the sound of a bugle the note of a flute or some other well known signals and arranged in lines of an hundred or a thousand each with their backs turned and beneath the shelter thus afforded the men prostrate themselves upon the ground, The drifting sand opposed in its course, rises in a little while to the camel's back and begins to pour down on the other side. Now they must again bestir themselves, if they would not be buried where they lie. Although the atmosphere is thick with the yellow sand, producing darkness so total that one cannot see an extended hand- and darkness that can be felt-a new position is to be taken a new line of camels formed and the same operation gone through with. This is often necessary to be done many times until reduced to perfect helplessness by exhaustion they sink and die and are buried beneath the sand. The groans of the women and children and blended cries of men and beasts help to make the scene awful beyond description. One of these Simoons to which Mr Buckingham was exposed lasted eighteen hours and out of a caravan of 20,000 persons returning from a pilgrimage to Mecca to the shrine of Mahomet which was overtaken near Damascus by this destroying blast only fifteen escaped alive to tell the tale."