Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/74

 Scriptures, where we camped for the night. In these desert marches it is always an object to pitch one's tent near a spring. We were indeed supplied with water, which we took in at Suez, from the Sweet Water Canal, which brings it from the Nile. From this were filled the casks, which were slung on the backs of our camels. These are so precious that when unloaded for the night, and set up on end, they are kept locked lest the men should snatch forbidden draughts. Water for themselves they carry in water-skins. But though we were provided so as to be in no danger of dying by thirst, yet in the desert there is something refreshing even in the sight of flowing water. How could we fail to camp at a spot where Moses had arrested his march because he found, as he tells us, twelve springs and seventy palm-trees? Moses is gone, but the springs are still here. "Men may come and men may go, but they flow on forever." The Arab still comes to find water for himself and his camels at the same spring which quenched the thirst of the Israelites. On the very spot where the great Hebrew leader pitched his tent, we camped at the end of our second day's march. In the morning I went down to the springs, and found them hardly worthy of their ancient fame, or of the place which they still hold in sacred poetry, where "the shade of Elim's palm" is the type of almost heavenly rest. Neither in water nor in shade does Elim approach the Wells of Moses. Instead of a running brook or bursting fountains, one finds only a sluggish rivulet melting away in the sand, with a few straggling palms along its brink. Yet slender as it is, and although the water is somewhat brackish, it may be the very water of life on the desert. The Arabs came from the camp, and filled their water-skins, which they slung over their shoulders, and then threw on the backs of their camels. I bent down to the stream to drink, and though it was not like putting my