Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/222

208 They lived in Goshen, as they had lived on the desert, with their flocks of sheep and herds of cattle; and so when they came to go up out of Egypt, it was the dictate of self-preservation to take their flocks and herds with them as their means of subsistence. For them to go out into the wilderness did not involve the same hardship as it would have been for the Egyptians, for they only went back to the mode of life of their fathers. They pitched their tents on the desert, and once more dwelt in tabernacles, as the patriarchs had done before them. The Exodus for them was simply going back to their old, wandering life.

But how was subsistence found for their flocks and herds? This can only be explained by supposing that the vegetation was much more abundant then than now, of which there is ample proof. In the wadies which we passed through in going to Sinai, there were signs that at one period the mountains, if not covered with forests, yet had by no means the bare look which they now have; while the wadies, which are burnt and dry, may have been as green as the deep valleys that one finds nestled in the recesses of the Alps. All writers bear witness to the constant and suicidal practice which has been going on for centuries among the Arabs, of denuding the mountains, not only of trees but of brushwood, for their camp-fires and to burn for charcoal. This of course has caused the little mountain springs to dry up, and the vegetation to become more scanty. But still with all that man has done to destroy vegetation, there is enough in the wadies and on the hillsides to support flocks of goats; and as we advanced northward, we found large herds of camels spread over the hills. In the wilderness it is not probable that the Israelites were all in one camp. They may have been spread over a tract as large as an English county,