Sands of the Nile, also known as Hindu Sands, is a stage illusion which was performed and made popular by Doug Henning.
Henning would stand behind a small, high, table, bearing a large transparent bowl and three small piles of colored sand. He would begin by pouring ordinary-looking water into the bowl. As he began to tell a story about an ancient Egyptian ritual, he would stir the water with his bare hand, upon which it would turn black and opaque. As the story unfolded, he would then place a handful of each color of sand into the bowl of dark water, then extract them, one by one, dry and unmixed. Henning would then stir the water one last time, and it would again become completely clear, with a few stray grains of sand left in it.
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Famous quotes containing the words sands of, sands and/or nile:
“Perchance the time will come when we shall not be content to go back and forth upon a raft to some huge Homeric or Shakespearean Indiaman that lies upon the reef, but build a bark out of that wreck and others that are buried in the sands of this desolate island, and such new timber as may be required, in which to sail away to whole new worlds of light and life, where our friends are.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Out of the cradle endlessly rocking,
Out of the mocking-bird’s throat, the musical shuttle,
Out of the Ninth-month midnight,
Over the sterile sands and the fields beyond, where the child
leaving his bed wandered alone, bareheaded, barefoot”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
“Hard by the lilied Nile I saw
A duskish river dragon stretched along.
The brown habergeon of his limbs enamelled
With sanguine alamandines and rainy pearl:
And on his back there lay a young one sleeping,
No bigger than a mouse;”
—Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803–1849)