Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/258

 fever — a fever to which I am subject, the fever of impatience. Nothing chafes me like forced inaction. After walking out to look at the clouds, which were threatening, I returned to the tent to find my friend still very weak. What should be done? Should he rest here for the day, or make a start, even if he could go only a short distance? At last he rose heavily and wearily, and bracing himself with a strong dose of quinine, mounted his camel. As soon as he was in the saddle, his spirits began to rise. The fresh air and the motion gave him new life. But what relieved my fears was to see his old passion for flowers kindle at the sight of some new specimens which he could gather for his collection of the Flora of the Desert. He could not resist the attraction of a new plant, and I verily believe, if he had been in articulo mortis, that the sight of a new flower brought to his bedside would have caused a smile of satisfaction to spread over his dying features. Of course I took courage from seeing him revive, and from the rebound of feeling, entered with new joy into the scenes that opened before us. As we rose upon a ridge that divided two wadies, there was a view of mountains in the distance that was so striking that I reined in my camel to take a long and steady look, and then called the cameleer to hold her till I could put down some notes, as an artist takes a hurried sketch of a scene which he fears will escape him forever. Many of the notes here written out were thus taken on the back of my camel. If they have any merit, it is because they were taken on the spot, and reproduce, as nearly as it is in my power to do it, the exact scenes and impressions of the moment.

At noon we halted beside a spring, which is supposed by some explorers to be the Fountain of Hagar, perhaps because it is the only one found in the region. It was the first time we had seen a drop of water since we left Nukhl,