We rode across a somber land. The rocks beneath our feet and the broken scattered fragments were dark with age, sepia-coloured. They looked as if they had been scorched by the sun and polished by the wind ever since they first emerged from beneath the sea. It was difficult to think that this stark land had ever been other than it was, that flowers and crops may once have flourished here. Now it was dead; the earth’s bared bones lay round us, sand-scoured beneath a glaring sky.