Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/250

 our virtuous old sheikh could thus enrich himself! Yet that very evening, at another of the camp-fires where we were not present, he boasted that several years before he had executed a great raid towards Mecca, as the fruit of which he brought back some forty camels! This was a pilgrimage to Mecca to some profit. In his view this was the great achievement of his life.

These marauding expeditions are the chief excitement of the desert, and a source of perpetual fighting between different sheikhs and different tribes. A man who makes a business of robbing must of course take the chances of war, and not complain if now and then he is robbed himself. He who does not hesitate to kill, must take his chances of being killed. We had at hand this very moment an illustration of the blood feud. Just now Dr. Post rode up, and said that his cameleer had an affair of honor on his hands. A few days since his brother was with others tending a herd of camels which had been driven to pasturage ground south of Hebron, when a party from another tribe, probably from near the Dead Sea, came upon them, and stole the camels, and killed his brother. Now his only thought is of revenge. As soon as he returns from being with us, he will muster some of his clan, and set out to make a raid in return. He will hope to recover his camels, but his one object in life will be to ill somebody in revenge for his brother!

When we heard that our own sheikh was a robber, we were grieved to the heart, as when one learns something to the reproach of a well-beloved friend: for had we not sat at his camp-fire, and taken sweet counsel together? Such a disappointment was calculated to shake our faith in human nature. Our ideal was destroyed; our idol was cast down to the ground. As Washington said after the treason of Arnold, "Whom can we trust now?" so could