Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/236

222, approaching or receding, and observed how the curved necks of the camels, and their long swinging motion, seem literally to flow, as it were, in rhythmic lines or waves, with the undulations of the desert.

But the interest of Nukhl is chiefly of a mournful and melancholy kind: for as the pilgrims appear and vanish, they leave not a trace behind, save in the graves of those who perish in the march. I observed that the plain was covered with low mounds, beneath which, we could not doubt, rested the remains of myriads of pilgrims. Along the route are scattered the skeletons of camels that have fallen by the way, and whose flesh has been devoured by vultures, such as are at this moment flying over the plain, looking for new victims. On the horizon is a range of low limestone hills, which are said to be the haunt of the wolf and the hyena, which sometimes creep down into the plain to find water. I could not resist the horrible thought that the famished beasts sometimes tore open the graves to make a banquet of the dead.

As we think of these pilgrims, who left their bones in the wilderness, we are reminded that this broad track in the desert has been the royal road of Death for more than a thousand years. Mecca has been the very nest and breeding-place of those diseases which are the scourges of Asia — the cholera and the plague — which have been carried there by pilgrims from all parts of Asia and Africa, and which returning pilgrims have brought with them and scattered over the world. Side by side with the returning caravans, keeping company with them, has travelled an unseen Pilgrim, advancing along this very route, as if it were his own king's highway, from Asia into Africa, and ravaging the shores of the Mediterranean, has at last carried consternation to Western Europe. Again and again has there been weeping, not only in the low quarters of populous cities,