Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/255

Rh Probably they took the old caravan route from Syria to Egypt — a journey that need not have taken more time than the twenty-four days now required for the camel's pace from Sinai to Gaza and back again.

It is one of the chief pleasures of this desert travelling, that it brings before us so vividly the mode of life of patriarchal times: for the world does not change on the desert, and men live now as they lived thousands of years ago. Abraham was a sheikh — not in character like the one from whom we have just parted, but in appearance perhaps not unlike a sheikh who may be seen now and then, aged and venerable, with long and snowy beard falling on his breast. He was a prince of the desert, rich in camels and asses, and flocks and herds, and men-servants and maid-servants. The custom by which he held his servants is the same which exists to-day. One of the men that accompanied us from Nukhl was a black who belonged to the sheikh — yet not a slave, as the dragoman was careful to explain, but "a servant born in his house," and entitled by usage, if not by written law, to certain privileges, which date from the earliest times.

While we were thus on the march, making our observations, and our comparisons of that which now is with that which has been, we had other experiences of a serious character to which I must refer, if it were only as a lesson and warning to future travellers. If these descriptions of Life on the desert should lead others to follow me, I must insist that they take the utmost precautions: for while the journey is one of extraordinary interest, it is also one of very great fatigue. The fatigue alone would be nothing, if one could lie down after a day's march, and get thoroughly rested. But on the desert the pressure is incessant to keep moving. There is no spot that invites to rest; no quiet wayside inn, no cooling