The following sketch vividly describes an English
traveler's impression of the desert country that
lies between Jerusalem and Cairo. Mr. Kinglake had
only an interpreter, two Arabian attendants and two
camels in his little caravan.
_Eothen_, the title of the volume from which this
selection is extracted, is a Greek word meaning
"From the East."
Once during this passage my Arabs lost their way
among the hills of loose sand that surrounded us,
but after a while we were lucky enough to recover our right
line of march. The same day we fell in with a sheik, the
head of a family that actually dwells at no great distance 5
from this part of the desert during nine months of the year.
The man carried a matchlock, and of this he was inordinately
proud, on account of the supposed novelty and ingenuity
of the contrivance. We stopped, and sat down and
rested awhile, for the sake of a little talk. 10
There was much that I should have liked to ask this man,
but he could not understand Dthemetri's language, and
the process of getting at his knowledge by double interpretation
through my Arabs was tedious. I discovered,
however (and my Arabs knew of that fact), that this man 15
and his family lived habitually for nine months of the year
without touching or seeing either bread or water. The
stunted shrub growing at intervals through the sand in
this part of the desert enables the camel mares to yield a
little milk, and this furnishes the sole food and drink of 20
their owner and his people. During the other three months
(the hottest, I suppose) even this resource fails, and then
the sheik and his people are forced to pass into another
district. You would ask me why the man should not
remain always in that district which supplies him with
water during three months of the year, but I don't know 5
enough of Arab politics to answer the question.
The sheik was not a good specimen of the effect produced
by his way of living. He was very small, very spare, and
sadly shriveled--a poor overroasted snipe--a mere
cinder of a man. I made him sit down by my side, and 10
gave him a piece of bread and a cup of water from out of
my goatskins. This was not a very tempting drink to
look at, for it had become turbid and was deeply reddened
by some coloring matter contained in the skins; but it
kept its sweetness and tasted like a strong decoction of 15
Russia leather. The sheik sipped this drop by drop with
ineffable relish, and rolled his eyes solemnly round after
every draft as though the drink were the drink of the
Prophet and had come from the seventh heaven.
An inquiry about distances led to the discovery that this 20
sheik had never heard of the division of time into hours.
About this part of my journey I saw the likeness of a
fresh-water lake. I saw, as it seemed, a broad sheet of
calm water stretching far and fair towards the south--stretching
deep into winding creeks and hemmed in by 25
jutting promontories, and shelving smooth off toward the
shallow side. On its bosom the reflected fire of the sun lay
playing and seeming to float as though upon deep, still
waters.
Though I knew of the cheat, it was not till the spongy 30
foot of my camel had almost trodden in the seeming lake
that I could undeceive my eyes, for the shore line was quite
true and natural. I soon saw the cause of the phantasm.
A sheet of water, heavily impregnated with salts, had
gathered together in a vast hollow between the sand hills,
and when dried up by evaporation had left a white saline
deposit; this exactly marked the space which the waters 5
had covered, and so traced out a good shore line. The
minute crystals of the salt, by their way of sparkling in
the sun, were made to seem like the dazzled face of a lake
that is calm and smooth.
The pace of the camel is irksome, and makes your 10
shoulders and loins ache from the peculiar way in which
you are obliged to suit yourself to the movements of the
beast; but one soon, of course, becomes inured to the work,
and after my first two days, this way of traveling became so
familiar to me that (poor sleeper as I am) I now and then 15
slumbered for some moments together on the back of my
camel.
After the fifth day of my journey, I no longer traveled
over the shifting hills but came upon a dead level--a dead
level bed of sand, quite hard, and studded with small shining 20
pebbles.
The heat grew fierce; there was no valley, no hollow,
no hill, no mound, no shadow of hill nor of mound, by which
I could mark the way I was making. Hour by hour I
advanced, and saw no change. I was still the very center 25
of a round horizon. Hour by hour I advanced, and still
there was the same, and the same, and the same--the
same circle of flaming sky--the same circle of sand still
glaring with light and fire. Over all the heaven above,
over all the earth beneath, there was no visible power that 30
could balk the fierce will of the sun. "He rejoiced as a
strong man to run a race; his going forth was from the end
of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it: and there
was nothing hid from the heat thereof." From pole to
pole, and from the east to the west, he brandished his
fiery scepter as though he had usurped all heaven and
earth. As he bid the soft Persian in ancient times, so 5
now, and fiercely too, he bid me bow down and worship
him; so now in his pride he seemed to command me, and
say, "Thou shalt have none other gods but me." I was
all alone before him. There were these two pitted together,
and face to face--the mighty sun for one, and for 10
the other this poor, pale, solitary Self of mine.
But on the eighth day, and before I had yet turned away
from Jehovah for the glittering god of the Persians, there
appeared a dark line upon the edge of the forward horizon,
and soon the line deepened into a delicate fringe that 15
sparkled here and there as though it were sown with diamonds.
There, then, before me were the gardens and the
minarets of Egypt, and the mighty works of the Nile, and
I, I had lived to see, and I saw them.
When evening came I was still within the confines of the 20
desert, and my tent was pitched as usual; but one of my
Arabs stalked away rapidly toward the west without telling
me of the errand on which he was bent. After a while he
returned. He had toiled on a graceful service; he had
traveled all the way on to the border of the living world, 25
and brought me back for a token an ear of rice, full, fresh,
and green.
--_Eothen._
1. Several aspects of the desert are herein
described. The first is a native sheik. What are
the others?
2. The camel and the blazing sun belong peculiarly
to the desert. What comments has Mr. Kinglake made
on each?
3. Show on your maps approximately where this
journey was made.