THE SIMOON.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXX, Issue 8623, 26 October 1888, Page 3

THE SIMOON.

(Cornhill Magazine.) The most remarkable of the hot winds is the Simoom {samhuli, 'samun, shdook, &c.), tiie violent whirlwind, with or without sand, which affects the deserts of Africa and South-Western Asia. The great heat of the soil passing into the atmosphere causes an appreciable expansion and lightening of the latter, resulting in the formation of small cyclonic disturbances. The surrounding atmosphere, in the neverceasing natural struggle to maintain an equilibrium, rushes in to fill the space vacated by the expanded air, and in its turn undergoes the same process, until at last there is a powerful current drawn into the vortex, frequently bringing with it quantities of loose sand, and the cyclone then becomes visible—huge columns of sand whirling round and moving forward at the same time. The air, already very dry before the simoom originated, now becomes still more so from the [presence of the dense cloud of dust. Away goes the storm across the desert :■ at first it is seen as a low haze on the horizon, hut quickly spreading the cloud advances, sometimes slowly, sometimes rapidly, the tall pillars being visible a long way off darkening the atmosphere, and bringing with them great destruction. In the whirl the wind blows with the force of a hurricane, hills of sand ate taken up, and are either scattered, ori are again gathered into new hills whereever the storm chooses to deposit them, so that the desert is dotted with frequently shifting sand ranges. Under these are buried whole caravans of traders, travellers, and even armies. The simoom is supposed to have annihilated the armies of Sennacherib and of Cambyses. So terribly dry is the air in these storms that it is fatal to vegetation, while the density of the dust cloud makes it almost impossible for human beings to breathe. This gave rise to the idea that the wind contained a deadly poison; hence the Arabic simoom, signifying a poisonous wind; but it is no more poisonous than any other wind, its fatal qualities being simply the excessive dryness and the quantity of fine sand with which it is loaded. The temperature of the air has been known to rise to 133 deg, and its dessicatiug effect is seen in dried-up mouths and nostrils, in skin cracking, intense thirst, painful and difficult breathing, and inability to sleep. The time occupied In passing a given spot varies between a few minutes and twenty or twenty-four hours, the blast leaving behind it unmistakeable evidence of the path it has travelled. The hot, parching air of the simoom, almost as soon as the breath is out of the body, and before decomposition has time to set in, causes the fiesh to lose all its firmness and consistency, so that it drops or may be taken off the bones easily. A party of officers sleeping on the roof of General Jacob’s house at Jacobabad thus recount their experience of the simoom. “ They were awakened by a sensation of suffocation, and an exceedingly hot, oppressive feeling in the air, while, at the same time a powerful smell of sulphur pervaded the atmosphere. On the following morning a number of trees' in the garden were found to be withered in a remarkable manner. It was as if a current of fire about twelve yards in breadth had passed through the garden in a straight line, singeing and destroying every green thing in its course. Entering on one side and passing out on the other, its path was as defined as the course of a river." Palgrave was overtaken by one of these scourges in Northern Arabia. After some preliminary remarks on the advance of the simoom, he proceeds:—“ So dark was the atmosphere, and so burning the heat, that it seemed that hell had risen from the earth, or descended from above. But at the moment when the worst of the concentrated poison-blast was coming round we were already prostrate, one and all within the tent, with our heads well wrapped up, almost suffocated, indeed, but safe; while our camels lay without like dead, their long necks stretched out on the sand, awaiting the passing of the gale. We remained thus for ten minutes, during which, a still heat, like that of a red-hot iron slowly passing over us, was alone to be felt. Then the tent walls began again to flap in the returning gusts, and announced that the worst of the simoom had gone by. My comrades appeared more like corpses than living men, and so, I suppose, did I. However, I could not forbear, in spite of warnings, to step out and look at the camels; they were still lying flat, as though they had been shot. The air was yet darkish, but before long it brightened up to its usual dazzling clearness. During the whole time that the simoom lasted, the atmosphere was entirely free from sand or dust; so that I hardly knew how tb account for its singular obscurity." > . The same traveller, while admitting that sandstorms resembling the duststorms of India are not uncommon in Arabia, throws a doubt on moving columns of sand in which whole caravans are buried, as the Bedouins whom ho questioned on the subject laughed at the idea, and declared them to be only travellers’ tales. He himself had had a long experience of the desert and had seen nothing of the kind. Burton, however, on his journey from Medina to Mecca, was “persecuted by the simum, and the air was filled with those majestic pillars of sand so graphically described by Abyssinian Bruce." When passing through a simoom on the journey to Medina, he was assured by the Arabs that it never destroyed life in their Allahfavoured land. “ I doubt the fact," adds Burton. Professor Vambery gives a graphic account of a simoom by which he was overtaken at Adamkrylgau (the place where men perish), between Khiva and Bokhara. The storm is there known as the Tebhad. “The contact of its first grains seemed like a rain of fire. If we had been exposed to the shock of the tebhad twenty miles farther on in the depth of the desert, wa should undoubtedly have perished."