Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/61

 now sprang up as we saw our train approaching. It halted in front of us, and the camels knelt down in the soft, warm sand for us to mount, and when they rose up, we were fairly launched on the desert.

To the left is a chain of low hills, which forms part of the escarpment, bounding like a wall the vast upland of the Great and Terrible Wilderness, which we were afterwards to traverse, and which we found to be indeed a land of desolation. Between these hills and the Red Sea stretches the desert, into which the traveller plunges as soon as he leaves the Wells of Moses. There is no gradual approach, by which he may get accustomed to his new experience. As the sailor puts out from the land into the open sea, so the traveller is instantly at sea in the billowy ocean of sand. And how did it seem — this first dash into the desert? The first sensations were of glare and heat. The heat was melting, the glare was blinding. The sun beat down upon us as in mid-summer. Turn which way I would, the sky above was brass, and the earth beneath a fiery furnace. Even the sight of the sea gave no suggestion of coolness, but rather the contrary, as it shimmered under the blazing sun, which seemed as if it would lick up all the waters of the earth. As we sweltered on over the sands, I thought, How little do those who "live at home at ease" know of the "delights" of foreign travel! After an hour or two, it began to grow rather monotonous; and fearing lest I should dissolve, if this heat continued all the afternoon, I turned meekly to the dragoman, and asked "Yohanna, how long are we to have this sort of thing?" "Thirty days," was the answer. I dropped the subject.

As some travellers who follow us may be as ignorant or as thoughtless as I was, perhaps it may be of service to tell how I learned by experience to guard myself against these two exposures and dangers of the desert. To