Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/53

 to set out on a solitary pilgrimage across the desert. While unsettled in plans, I learned that Dr. George E. Post, Professor of Surgery and Botany in the Syrian Protestant College at Beirut, had for some time desired to make the journey to Sinai, and I wrote to him inviting him to share my tent and table. To my great joy, he was able to accept the invitation, and never was a traveller more fortunate in his companion. I found him the model of a Christian gentleman and scholar. He is one of that corps of young men who, uniting scientific knowledge with missionary zeal, have done so much both for science and religion, and I may add, for the honor of the American name in the East. For weeks we rode side by side on our camels, and his conversation beguiled the weariness of the way. With such a companion, one could never be lonely. He had lived eighteen years in Beirut, was master of the Arabic language, and was familiar with ail Oriental customs. He joined me in Cairo on the 20th of February, and we were together a week before we set out on our journey.

He at once relieved me of all the details of our proposed expedition. It is no small thing to make preparation for crossing the desert. One must choose his dragoman, and draw up a formal contract, which has to be signed and sealed before the Consul, in which every item is specified — the number of camels and tents, the days of marching, and the provisions of every kind, even to what we should have for breakfast, for luncheon and dinner, and to the number of our sheets and towels. Travellers in the East may be pardoned if they are sometimes lifted up with vanity when they see that it takes almost as much to set them in motion as to get a ship under weigh. Though there were but two of us, it required a considerable outfit for a month in camp. Everything had to be carried on the backs of camels — our tents, iron bedsteads, mattresses, table, and