Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/103

 tents, where they were lying stretched on the soft sand, waiting for their riders. The moon had but just dipped behind the hills, and the sun had not yet given a sign of his coming, when we vaulted into the saddle and set out upon our march, following a trail up a wady worn in the course of ages by a torrent, which had washed down great boulders that at every step blocked our advance. The path turned and twisted, till it seemed almost impossible to force a passage. How far we went on camels' backs, I cannot tell; certainly not over three or four miles, for it would have taken a quick stepper to make two miles an hour up such a pass. This slow march would have been very tiresome, and wearied us even at the beginning of the day, were it not that our eyes were soon fascinated by the scene which was beginning to dawn upon us. As we crept slowly upward, streaks of light announced the coming of the day; and as soon as the sun rose above the Eastern mountains, it struck across the valley to the grander heights before us. Serbal, though standing alone, is not a solitary peak, but rather a group, or a giant mass, splintered into columnar shapes, thus making five separate columns, which were touched in succession by the sun as he rose higher and higher. The effect recalled a memorable sunrise on the Himalayas, with this difference, that there it fell on glittering pinnacles of snow, where now it lighted up only great masses of rock; but as these were of red granite, they seemed to be kindled by the morning sun, so that if the Persian fire-worshippers had been here, they might well have uncovered their heads, and stood silent and reverent at the sight of those flaming altars in the sky.

For about two hours our camels kept on their toilsome climb, till we came to a point where they could not move another step. Here was just space among the rocks for