Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/81

 Thus lightly clad, but with sinews of steel which are better than a girdle about his loins, he will march all day, and when the night overtakes him, wrap himself up like a bundle, and lie down and sleep under the open sky. These long marches are made with little food. The Arabs eat little, because they have little to eat; they are "lean and hungry-looking," because they are hungry. It is not once in a month they have a full stomach. Hence, if by the favor of Allah they get a "square meal," they eat till it is gone. Set before them a roasted sheep, and they will gorge themselves like anacondas, even though they must fast the next day. In this utter thoughtlessness of the future, they are like children. Indeed if one were to describe them in a single word, he could hardly do it better than by saying that they are grown-up children. They are children in intelligence. No matter how old an Arab may be, how many suns and moons have rolled over his head, he remains to the day of his death as truly a child as when he was born into the world. Not only does he not know how to read and write, but he does not know his own age; he cannot tell the day, or even the year, of his birth. I doubt if ore of cur Bedaween could tell his age within five, even if he could within ten, years. Indeed he has no idea of time any more than of distance. Ask him how far it is to such a wady or such a camping-ground? He will answer "A good way." Indeed he never measures distance by miles, but only by hours, and even of these his ideas are of the vaguest kind. Ask him how long since such a thing happened, and he will answer "A good while ago." As he has no clear memory of the present, so he has no forecast of the future. Like a child, he lives only in the present Like a child, he acts wholly upon impulse, upon the feeling of the moment. Like a child, his chief delight is in telling stories, and in listening to them. The tales of the