Three days ago, we left sinister Baluchistan with its wilderness of sand and salt shimmering beneath the deadly sun. The outline of its hideous desert pursued us for a long time, the monotonous violet ins and outs which continued to unfold to the very limits of our horizon. Then we saw nothing but sea, but a warm colourless lifeless sea, over which lingered a constant lukewarm unhealthy mist.

As it was April, the sun drew out immense fertile mists from the Arabian Sea, the treasure of the storm-clouds carried by the winds over to India for the great spring rains. The showers born here on the surface of the lifeless waters move off into the distance towards the east and not one of them revives the dried-up coasts around; they are a special region, allowing no plants to grow and bringing to mind lunar desolation. We were making our way towards the Persian Gulf, the most stifling gulf in the world, a sheet of water hot since the beginning of time, between coasts dead from the heat and where only rarely does storm rain fall, where there are no green fields and where, in the eternal drought, only a mineral kingdom shines forth. We thus felt oppressed by the sultry humidity; everything we touched appeared warm and damp and we breathed in steam, as if above a basin of boiling water. The maleficent sun, maintaining the temperature of a boiler night and day, rose and set without rays, all dull yellow, dimmed by water as in the mists of the north.

But, on the fourth day, this same sun rose in pure splendour. Arabia was there right next to us, having loomed up by surprise during the night, its mountain tops outlined high in the air, suddenly clear, limpid and deep. Arabia, land of drought, blew its burning breath on us, breath devoid of all water vapour and sweeping mists out to sea. Everything became magnificently light again, displaying its lifeless resplendence in absolute transparency, as must happen when the sun rises on planets without atmosphere.

Then, as soon as the pink magic of morning had passed, the mountains of Arabia took on the dark forceful hues of ochre and coal for the day. With their thousands of holes and burned black marks, they take on the look of monstrous calcined coral and monstrous sponges passed through fire; they look like old unusable ashes of primitive cataclysms.