For an experience of the oppressive awfulness of solitude, and all the
weary monotony of waste, come now, with Kinglake, into mid-desert.
"As long as you are journeying in the interior of the desert, you have
no particular point to make for as your resting-place. The endless
sands yield nothing but small stunted shrubs; even these fail after the
first two or three days; and from that time you pass over broad plains,
you pass over newly reared hills, you pass through valleys that the
storm of the last week has dug; and the hills and the valleys are sand,
sand, sand, still sand and only sand, and sand and sand again. The
earth is so samely, that your eyes turn toward heaven,--toward heaven,
I mean, in the sense of sky. You look to the sun, for he is your
task-master, and by him you know the measure of the work that you have
done, the measure of the work that remains for you to do. He comes when
you strike your tent in the early morning, and then, for the first hour
of the day, as you move forward on your camel, he stands at your near
side, and makes you know that the whole day's toil is before you.
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