Page:Mount Seir, Sinai and Western Palestine.djvu/152

118 to the mysterious salt mountain, which is connected by the traditional name of "Jebel Usdum" with the doomed "cities of the plain," and find ourselves unable to give it a personal examination during the time at our disposal. We thought (it must be confessed) of the letters from home lying for us at Jerusalem, of the possible anxiety of friends who might have expected us within the walls by this time, and of the diminishing prospect of spending Christmas at the birthplace of the Saviour.

In the afternoon, however, our Arab messengers arrived: they had succeeded in eluding the guards, and had faithfully delivered our letter to the agent of Messrs. Cook and Sou. They produced a letter in reply to say—that "the horses and mules would be with us without fail and without delay?"—not at all, my dear reader. You have not lived in the East or under Turkish rule! The reply was, that on receipt of our letter the agent had got horses and mules ready, had then applied to the Pasha for an escort, and had been peremptorily refused. Orders were issued that, before proceeding to Jerusalem, we must undergo quarantine for fifteen days at Gaza, and that the muleteers would also be obliged to undergo a similar detention at our cost, should they leave the city. The agent had then represented the case to Mr. Moore, Her Majesty's Consul, who sent us a kind letter expressing his sympathy, and stating that his efforts with the Pasha to have the orders set aside were ineffectual, as they (the orders) really came from Constantinople. Under these circumstances Messrs. Cook's agent came to the conclusion not to send the mules and horses till further orders; a conclusion that practically consigned us to imprisonment for at least another five or six days, and possibly for a much longer period.

Our feelings at this news "may be better imagined than described," to use a familiar phrase. Christmas at Jerusalem was now out of the question; letters from home indefinitely postponed. Indeed, our exit from The Ghôr seemed also indefinitely postponed; and our only consolation was that our friends at Jerusalem were not ignorant of our fate; and it seemed that it was entirely in their hands whether we were to be left as prisoners amongst the Bedawins till all our money, provisions, and hope were exhausted. Under these circumstances we applied to Sheikh Ali, to ascertain whether he could escort us across to Gaza along the direct road by Ain el Melh and Beersheba. This, however, he positively refused to do; and we had again to fall back on our Arab messengers, and await the result of a second letter to the agent, with instructions to forward the