Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/261

Rh were coming up out of the desert: we were getting nearer the sea. These great ridges of sand are the dunes of a sea coast. Indeed the dear Doctor traced them farther — to the same Sahara which is the source of storms, from which they are blown into the sea, and carried along by currents setting eastward to the southern bend of the coast of the Mediterranean, where, washed up on the shore and dried by the sun, they are again lifted by the winds, and borne thus far into the interior.

In the afternoon we came into a broad land, not cut up by narrow wadies — a wide, open, rolling country, of long sweeps and gentle undulations, that might be as beautiful as the breezy downs of England, if only these were clothed with vegetation. That too increases: it is more to-day than since we entered the Desert of the Wandering. Flowers bloom more abundantly. The eye of my friend gleamed with pleasure as he caught sight of the lily, or asphodel, and of the Star of Bethlehem. We are now fairly in the South Country, the portion of Canaan set apart to the tribe of Simeon, where, although the patches of cultivation are as yet few and scattered, there is good pasture-ground for flocks and herds. And so He who led the Israelites across the Great and Terrible Wilderness, has now, over the same burning desert, brought two weary pilgrims to the borders of the Promised Land.