Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/77

 risk. My feet were soaked; my hob-nailed shoes, bought in Cairo for mountain climbing, were badly water-logged; and altogether I was in a bedraggled condition. But my spirits were so high that they kept me from any ill effect of this rashness. Mounting my camel, I threw my dripping legs over the pommel of the saddle, and thus hung them up to dry, leaving shoes and socks and trousers to take care of themselves. I found the enthusiasm of a march, which keeps the blood almost at fever heat, better than quinine to ward off the danger of taking cold.

And now appeared in the distance another welcome sight — a couple of camels, with Arabs at their side, and following on foot, with gun in hand, a solitary traveller! Meeting a traveller on the desert is an event, like hailing a ship at sea. We addressed the stranger in English and French, and to the latter he returned an answer. He proved to be an Italian, who had been for months in the mountains, searching for precious stones, and was now returning to Suez. "Would he take letters for us?" "With the greatest pleasure." In an instant down went the camels, and two travellers were standing beside them, pencil in hand, writing a few words to those who were far away. A moment more, and the traveller was gone. We did not see him again, but weeks after we learned that the letters thus written on the desert had reached their destinations at Beirut and Florence, and given great relief, as they carried the first tidings of our safety.

The sandy beach, which lies here between the sea and the mountains, broadens into a plain, and stretches on for some miles, so that it took us over two hours to cross it. As nowhere on the desert had we found more utter desolation, and nowhere did the sun blaze down with a fiercer heat, I am afraid some of my countrymen, passing over the "burning marl," have found that, in the temptations it offered to