"It is said the musical sands will give out a sound even in a laboratory far from their native dunes. It may be, yet sometimes in my London home I take up a handful of Crescent Lake sand and try to make it sing, but I listen in vain for the thunder-roll of its voice. Between the leaves of a book I have pressed a small branch of sand-jujube* flowers, and whenever I catch its subtle but fading fragrance, I, like the Kashgarian exile, long for a place that seems so near and is yet so far away. Sick with longing I walk among the crowds while my spirit flees to the quiet which is found by the hidden lake among the dunes."
[* eloeagnus latifolia]
The Gobi Desert Mildred Cable with Francesca French
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