20 - Optical properties of desert atmospheres

Summary

About a desert sunset:

… I sat down and watched a sunset, which grew from grey to pink, and to red; and then to a crimson so intolerably deep that we held our breath in trepidation for some stroke of flame or thunder to break its dizzy stillness.

T. E. Lawrence, British writer and adventurer Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1926)

Then, after making our purchases, we say good-bye with wishes for safe passage. They go one way and we go the opposite. And our respective images begin to undulate. Soon their camels seem double because of the air. And they themselves, now elongated, now shortened, seem to have two heads apiece, like the kings and queens on decks of cards. Ten o'clock. Ten thirty. It was about this same time when the little fairyland lakes had begun to appear yesterday. Already a few materialize – so cool and so blue! – harbingers no doubt of a larger illusion to come. They still threaten to flood out and swamp you. But on the contrary when you get close – blink! Nothing. The lakes are swallowed by the arid sand or folded up like blue cloth. Then they dissolve rapidly and in silence, like the imagined things they are.

J. Viaud (P. Loti), French writer and adventurer Le Désert (1895)