Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/115

 and weariness, for it is the spots in our earthly pilgrimage where we have been faint and weary which linger longest in the memory and the heart. To be sure, we were footsore as we rose up for the duties of the day, but our spirits were light if our limbs were heavy. Our way led along the bed of the little stream, which was overhung by palms. Nowhere have we seen so many palms since we entered the desert, and they are not like the palms of Egypt, naked trunks, with but a tuft of leaves at the top, but are feathered from the ground, and thus spread out their foliage in all the wildness and beauty of nature. No wonder this water-course is a great attraction for the Bedaween, who gather here with their flocks and herds. Up to this time we had seen scarcely a living animal on the desert, except the camels and the little black goats, which furnish the Arab with milk, and with haircloth for his cloaks and his tents. But once to-day we saw several sheep, and perhaps half a dozen little donkeys! Really, after hearing for so many days only the grunting of camels, it was some relief to hear the good honest bray of an ass. Twice we passed through narrow gates in the rocks, which seemed as if caused by a rush of waters, and in which Dr. Post found proof that these wadies were formerly the beds of lakes, which had broken through these gates and thus been drained off to the sea. Storms still sweep through them at times with tremendous fury. In 1867 an English traveller witnessed one of these in the Wady Feiran, when the water rose so rapidly that he had to flee to the hills for his life, as the whole valley, three hundred yards wide, became the bed of a river eight to ten feet deep, that swept along like an Alpine torrent.

As we advanced, the wady grew wider, and broadened out into a kind of upland valley, while the hills sank lower. Weary as we were, we made a long march, for the