Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/248

 Arab, he was not unintelligent. He knew the desert as the mariner knows the sea, and gave us much information about the state of his people. "How do you manage to live here on the desert?" was one of our first inquiries. "Well," answered the sheikh, "we make a few grindstones, and burn a little charcoal, and if a man raises two or three camels, he sells them." "But, does not the government pay you for the protection you give to the pilgrims who camp at Nukhl on their way to Mecca?" "The government pay anything?" said the old man, and his eyes flashed as he answered bitterly: "The government would take the grave-clothes off from the dead! It pays for nothing, but takes everything."

Few of the Arabs can read and write. Yet in proportion to their ignorance, is their reverence for what is written or printed, which has to them such a superiority to their own degree of knowledge as to be almost sacred in their eyes. Thus when a question arose as to where we must camp for the night, Dr. Post appealed to the map in the guide-book. But the sheikh shook his head; it was quite impossible for him to comprehend how the relations of dark lines on a map corresponded to the relations of mountains, wadies, and plains. He did not know; it might be so; but he could not understand it. "But," said the Doctor with the tone of a man who produces an argument which settles the matter, "is anything that is printed in a book a lie?" "No, indeed," said the old man with a simplicity of faith delightful to witness, "God forbid!"

One evening as they were sitting round the camp-fire, Dr. Post took the opportunity to ask about the laws of hospitality among the Bedaween. He said: "If your tribe was at war with another tribe, and you were to meet one of that tribe alone on the desert, how would you treat