Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/274

260 large flocks of sheep, of the breed known by the enormous size and fatness of their tails. The country generally was cultivated. The soil was light and thin, owing to a lack of care in husbandry, but still it was waving with harvests. Whichever way we turned (except south) — north, east, and west — we saw the wide, open, rolling slopes standing thick with wheat and barley. Between the upland pastures clothed with flocks, were the valleys covered over with corn. That evening, as we stood at the door of our tent and looked towards the sunset, and over the varied landscapes which were touched with the light of departing day, we had to confess that we had rarely beheld a scene of greater natural beauty. But for the absence of trees, we might have been in one of the finest parts of England.

We camped to-night, not, as the night before, in a hollow, to lie hidden from observation, for there were too many Arabs near us to render concealment possible, (we could see their black tents and hear the barking of their dogs,) but on a gentle swell of ground, from which we had an unbroken sweep all around the horizon.

Hardly were the tents pitched before we had our sympathies greatly excited by an incident of the day. When we had resumed our march, our old soldier was missing, and did not appear the whole afternoon. At night he came into camp mad with grief and rage. It appeared that in the melee he had had his sword taken from him, and though he went back for it, he could not recover it. The poor old man was in despair. It was a matter that touched his honor. The weapon itself was of little value, and I would have gladly given him another and much better one. But that was not the same thing. This was the badge of his military profession, the sign that he had been in the wars, when he followed the great Ibrahim in his conquest of Syria. But we comforted him with the