Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/202

 

LEAVING SINAI — PASSING THROUGH THE MOUNTAINS.

When one has made the pilgrimage to Mount Sinai, there follows the practical question, how to get back again. Travellers generally return direct to Suez, which is at once the nearest, the easiest, and the safest route. The distance from the Wells of Moses, where we took our camels, to the Convent, is one hundred and fifty-three miles, which can be passed over by vigorous marching in six days. But that is excellent travelling on the desert. A camel's pace does not commonly exceed two and a half miles an hour (one that can go three miles is a very brisk stepper), so that it requires ten hours on a camel's back to make twenty-five miles. But once at Suez, the slow moving and the hardship are all over. The traveller is within "striking distance" of any point he may wish to reach. He touches both the railroad and the telegraph, and is thus within the limits of civilization. He can return in a few hours to Cairo or Alexandria; or if bound to the Holy Land, can leave the railroad at Ismailia, and take a boat down the Suez Canal to Port Said, from which a night's sail will land him at Jaffa.

But it is not always the shortest route which is the most attractive to tourists. Having reached Sinai, we were not at all inclined to retrace our steps, and traverse the same wadies and the same wastes of sand as before. We preferred to take a longer way round, which, though