The Drought at Gaza.
Circa a.d. 400.
A STILL deep blue sky,—not an air stirring, the palms were as if painted on the horizon, there was no motion in them, the distant Idumæan range was glowing an intense purple; there was not the least sparkle of water on the rounded stones which strewed the beds of the torrents seaming the sides of the neighbouring hills; even the deep blue sea flashed in its short listless waves like fire, leaving the beach in many places encrusted with the salt from its retreating ripples.
The air was intensely hot, quivering like that over a kiln, above the sky was almost painfully blue, hardly a relief to the eye tired with the glare of the white sand hills which lay about Gaza. The great temple of Marnas shone out also with its spotless white marble pillars against the sky, like a sail on the distant sea, and the
