Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/75

 lips to "the moss-covered bucket that hung in the well," still there was a pleasure in drinking of the very springs of which Moses drank more than three thousand years ago.

But the traveller on the desert must not linger by bubbling streams or under palm-trees. While we had been here, the camels had been got ready, and we must up and away. To-day's march brought a change of scene, as we left behind the flat or rolling sandy plain, and entered into a region more wild and rugged. We found that this Peninsula was not an unbroken plain, stretching to the base of Sinai, but that "the wilderness" was a wilderness of mountains, through which one could make his way only by following the wadies that wound about in every direction, forming a perfect labyrinth, and that sometimes assumed the character of mountain defiles. This afternoon we pursued our course along these river beds till we came into one where a torrent in the course of ages had cut through successive strata of rock, cleaving them to the base of the hills, and forming a gorge almost like a cañon of the Rocky Mountains. This we followed in all its windings for several hours, till suddenly the cliffs opened, and before us lay the Red Sea, beyond which was a range of mountains, the line of which was broken by peaks shooting up here and there, like the cliffs of Capri, or the islands of the Greek Archipelago. It was now five o'clock, and the sun was sinking in the west, so that every point of that long serrated ridge stood up sharp and clear against the sky. Here was a scene which no artist could transfer to canvas. We had before us at once the mountains and the sea, and mountains on both sides of the sea. Enchanted and almost bewildered by the scene, as we came out upon a wide stretch of beach, we dismounted to walk, for the greater freedom of motion, and that we could stop and turn to every point of the horizon. Can I ever forget