Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/281

Rh carry his bones, saying "There they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife; there they buried Isaac and Rebekah his wife; and there I buried Leah." So near were we in the country over which we were passing to the scenes of sacred history, and even to patriarchal times.

But our musings were cut short by a sight which now burst upon us: for as we rose above the crest of the hill, before us lay the Mediterranean! We had already snuffed the sea breeze, but now we saw the great waters, the white caps rolling in on the long sandy beach. I am afraid there was a little choking in the throat, and some tears crept into the eyes, as we beheld the sea which at once separated and united us with the living world to which we belonged. On the shore was a town — the very one which had been our destination ever since we rode out of the gate of the Convent of Mount Sinai. It was yet two hours away, but little mattered that since it was in view, and every step brought us nearer. Once more trees appeared in the landscape, and patches of ground became more richly cultivated. To open fields of grain succeeded orchards and gardens, divided by hedges of cactus, through which we made our way. As we approached the city, the domes of mosques rose into view, and minarets lifted their tall and slender pinnacles in air. But suddenly my eye caught another sight, which fixed it more than any dome or minaret — it was a line of telegraph! I had always thought telegraph-poles the ugliest objects with which man ever deformed the fair face of nature; but when I saw the slender line that ran along their tops, and thought of the messages winged by lightning that flew over it, these gaunt, ungainly objects took a sudden and strange attraction, and I looked up to them almost with reverence as the long legs of civilization, with which it goes striding over hill and valley, over island and continent, to unite together all the