A good Word for the Arabs.-A Prophecy fulfilled.-Ruins of a Lost City. -A Sheik of the Bedouins.-Interviews and Negotiations.-A Hadj, or Pilgrimage to Mecca.-Mohammedan Heaven for Wives.-A French Sheik.-The Bastmado.-Depadure for the Desert.

I HAD now finished my journey in Egypt, from the Mediterranean to the Cataracts, or, as the boundaries of this Ancient country are given in the Bible, from "Migdol to Syene, even unto the borders of Ethiopia." For nearly two months I had been floating on the celebrated river, with a dozen Arabs, prompt to do my slightest bidding, and, in spite of bugs and all manner of creeping things, enjoying pleasures and comforts that are not to be found in Europe; and it was with something more than an ordinary feeling of regret that I parted from my worthy boatmen. I know that it is the custom with many travellers to rail at the Arabs, and perhaps to beat them, and have them bastinadoed but I could not and cannot join in such oppression of this poor and much-abused people. On the contrary, I do not hesitate to say that I always found them kind, honest, and faithful, thankful for the smallest favour, never surly or discontented, and always ready and anxious to serve me with a zeal that I have not met in any other people; and when they came up in a body to the locanda to say farewell, I felt that I was parting with tried and trusty friends, most probably for ever. That such was the case with the rais there could be little doubt; he seemed to look upon himself as a doomed man, and a broken cough, a sunken eye, and a hollow cheek proclaimed him one fast hurrying to the grave.

I was now about wandering amid new and different scenes. I was about to cross the dreary waste of sand, to exchange my quiet, easy-going boat for a caravan of dromedaries and camels; to pitch my tent wherever the settling sun might find me, and, instead of my gentle Arabs of the Nile, to have for my companions the wild, rude Bedoins of the desert; to follow the wandering footsteps of the children of Israel when they took up the bones of Joseph, fled before the anger of Pharaoh, from their land of bondage; to visit the holy mountain of Sinai, where the Almighty by the hands of his servant Moses, delivered the tables his law to his chosen people.

But I had in view something beyond the holy mountain. My object was to go from thence to the Holy Land. I should return to Suez, and thence cross the desert to Arich and Gaza, I should be subjected to a quarantine fourteen days on account of the plague in Egypt, and I thought I might avoid this by striking directly through the heart of the desert from Mount Sinai to the frontier of the Holy Land. There were difficulties and perhaps dangers on this route; but, besides the advantage of escaping quarantine, another consideration presented itself, which, in the end, I found it impossible to resist. This route was entirely new. It lay through the land of Edom-a land that occupies a large space on the pages of the, Bible; Edom denounced by God himself, once given to Esau for his inheritance, "as being Of the fatness of the earth," but now a desolate monument of the Divine wrath, and a witness to the truth of the words spoken by his prophets. The English friends with whom I had dined at Thebes first suggested to me this route, referring me, at the same time, to Keith on the Prophecies, in which, after with great clearness and force the fulfilment of prophecy after prophecy, as illustrated by the writings and reports of travellers, the learned divine enlarges upon the prophecy of Isaiah against the land of Idumea, "None shall pass through it for ever and ever," and proves, by abundant references to the works of modern travellers, that though several have crossed its borders, none have ever passed through it. Burckhardt, he says, made the nearest approach to this achievement; but, by reference to the geographical boundaries, he maintains that Burckhardt did not pass through the land of Edom; and so strenuously does the learned divine insist upon the fulfilment of the prophevy to its utmost extent, as to contend that, if Burckhardt did not pass through the land of Edom, he died in consequence of the hardships he suffered on that journey. I did not mean to brave a prophecy. I had already learned to regard the words of the inspired penman with an interest I never felt before; and with the evidence I had already had of the sure fulfilment of their predictions, I should have considered it daring and impious to place myself in the way of a still impending curse. But I did not go so far as the learned commentator, and to me the words of the prophet seemed sufficiently verified in the total breaking up of the route then travelled, as the great highway from Jerusalem to the Red Sea and India, and the general and probably eternal desolation that reigns in Edom.

Still, however, it added to the interest with which I looked upon this route; and, moreover, in this dreary and desolate region, for more than a thousand years buried from the eyes of mankind, its place unknown, and its very name almost forgotten, lay the long-lost city of Petra, the capital of Arabia Petraea, and the Edom of the Edomites, containing according to the reports of the only travellers who have ever been permitted to enter it, the most curious and wonderful remains existing in the world: a city excavated from solid rock, with long ranges of dwellings, temples, and tombs cut in the sides of the mountain, and all lying in ruins, "thorns coming up in her palaces, nettles and brambles in the fortresses thereof, a habitation of dragons, and a court for owls." Three parties had at different times visited Petra, but neither of them had passed through the land of Idumea; and, according to the reports of the few travellers who had crossed its borders, the Bedouins who roamed over the dreary sands of Idumea were the most ferocious tribe of the desert race. It will not be considered surprising, therefore, that, having once conceived the project, I was willing to fulfil it even at the cost of some personal difficulty and hazard.

I have said that this route was entirely new. It was known that two Englishmen, with an Italian, long resident in Egypt, and understanding thoroughly the language and character of the Arabs, had started from Cairo about a year before to make this journey, and, as they had been heard of afterward in Europe, it was known that they had succeeded; but no account of their journey had ever been published, and all the intelligence I could obtain of the route and its perils was doubtful and confused. The general remark was, that the undertaking was dangerous, and that I had better let it alone. Almost the only person who encouraged me was Mr. Gliddon, our vice-consul; and probably, if it had not been for him, I should have given up the idea. Besides the difficulties of the road, there were others of a more personal nature. I was alone. I could not speak the language, and I had with me a servant who, instead of leading me on, and sustaining me when I faltered, was constantly torturing himself with idle fears, and was very reluctant to accompany me at all. Nor was this all; my health was far from being restored, and my friend Waghorn was telling me every day, with a warning voice, to turn my steps westward: but objections presented themselves in vain and perhaps it was precisely because of the objections that I finally determined upon attempting the journey through the land of Idumea.

By singular good fortune the sheik of Akaba was then in Cairo. The great yearly caravan of pilgrims for Mecca was assembling outside the walls and he was there, on the summons of the pacha, to escort and protect them through the desert as far as Akaba. He was the chief of a powerful tribe of Bedouins somewhat reduced by long and bloody wars with other tribes, but still maintaining, in all its vigour, the wild independence of the race, and yet strong enough to set at defiance even the powerful arm of the pacha. A system of mutual forbearance seemed to exist between them, the Bedouins knowing that, although the pacha might not subdue them, his long arm could reach and disturb them even in their sandy hills; while the pacha could not overlook the fact that the effort would cost him the lives of his best troops, and that the plunder of their miserable tents would bring him neither glory nor profit. Thus the desert was still the possession of the Bedouins; they still claimed a tribute from the stranger for permission to pass over it, and this induced the pacha annually to invite the sheik of Akaba to Cairo, to conduct the caravan for Mecca, knowing that if not so invited, even the sacred character of the pilgrims would not protect them in passing through his country.

I found him about a mile outside the walls, near the tombs of the califs, on the edge of the desert, sitting on a mat under his tent, and surrounded by a dozen of his swarthy tribe, armed with long sabres, pistols, and matchlock guns. The sheik was a short stout man, of the darkest shade of bronze; his eye keen, roving, and unsettled; his teeth white; and his skin so dried up and withered that it seemed cleaving to his very bones. At the first glance I did not like his face; it wanted frankness, and even boldness; and I thought at the time, that if I had met him alone in the desert I should not have trusted him. He received me with great civility, while his companions rose, gave me their low salaam, seated me on the mat beside him, and then resumed their own cross-legged attitude, with less noise than would have attended the entrance of a gentleman into a drawing-room on a morning call. All stared at me with silent gravity; and the sheik, though desert born and bred, with an air and manner that showed him familiar with the usages of good society in Cairo, took the pipe from his mouth and handed it to me.

All being seated, the consul's janizary, who bad come with me, opened the divan; but he had scarcely begun to declare my object before the whole group, sheik and all, apparently surprised out of their habitual phlegm, cried out together that they were ready to escort me, and to defend me with their lives against every danger. I said a few words, and they became clamorous in their assurances of the great friendship they had conceived for me; that life was nothing in my service; that they would sleep in my tent, guard and watch me by day and night, and, in short, that they would be my father, mother, sister, and brother, and all my relations, in the desert; and the final assurance was, that it would not be possible to travel that road except under their protection. I then began to inquire the terms, when, as before, all spoke at once, some fixed one price, some another, and for bucksheesh whatever I pleased. I did not like this wild and noisy negotiation. I knew that I must make great allowance for the extravagant language of the Arabs; but there seemed to be an eagerness to get me among them which, in my eyes, was rather ominous of bad intentions. They were known to be a lawless people, and distinguished, even among their desert brethren, as a wild and savage tribe. And these were the people with whom I was negotiating to meet in the desert, at the little fortress of Akaba, at the eastern extremity of the Red Sea; into whose hands I was to place myself, and from whom I was to expect protection against greater dangers.

My interview with them was not very satisfactory, and, wishing to talk the matter over more quietly with the sheik alone, I asked him to go with me to my hotel; whereupon the whole group started up at once, and, some on foot, and others on dromedaries or on horseback, prepared to follow. This did not suit me, and the sheik contrived to get rid of all except one, his principal and constant attendant, "his black," as he was called. He followed me on horseback, and when he came up into my room, it was, perhaps, the first time in his life that he had ever been under a roof. As an instance of his simplicity and ignorance, it may be worth mentioning here, although I did not know it until we were on the point of separating after our journey was completed, that he mistook the consul's janizary, who wore a dashina red Turkish dress, sword, &c., for an officer of the pacha's household, and, consequently, had always looked upon me as specially recommended to him by the pacha. I could not come to any definite understanding with him. The precise service that I required of him was to conduct me from Akaba to Hebron, through the land of Edom, diverging to visit the excavated city of Petra, a journey of about ten days. I could not get him to name any sum as compensation for this service; he told me that he would conduct me for nothing, that I might give him what I pleased, &c. When I first spoke about the terms at his tent, he had said twelve dollars a camel, and, as it seemed to me, he had named this sum without the least calculation, as the first that happened to occur to him. I now referred him to this price, which he had probably forgotten, hoping to establish it as a sort of basis upon which to negotiate; but, when his attention was called to it, he insisted upon the twelve dollars, and something more for bucksheesh. A fair price for this service would have been about two dollars. I told him this did not satisfy me; that I wanted everything definitely arranged beforehand, and that I would not give the enormous price he asked, and buchsheesh in proportion; but I could do nothing with him; he listened with perfect coolness; and taking his pipe from his mouth, in answer to everything I said, told me to come to him at Akaba, come to him at his tent; he had plenty of camels, and would conduct me without any reward, or I might give him what I pleased. We parted without coming to an arrangement. He offered to send one of his men to conduct me from Mount Sinai to Akaba; but, as something might occur to prevent my going, I would not take him. He gave me, however, his signet, which he told me every Bedoin on that route knew and would respect, and writing his name under it according to the sound, I repeated it over and over, until I could pronounce it intelligibly, and treasured it up as a password for the desert.

The next morning, under pretence that I went to see the starting of the great caravan of pilgrims for Mecca, I rode out to the sheik; and telling him tht, if I came to him, I should come destitute of everything, and he must have some good tobacco for me, I slipped a couple of gold pieces into his hand, and without any further remark, left the question of my going undetermined. It was worth my ride to see the departure of the caravan. It consisted of more than thirty thousand pilgrims, who had come from the shores of the Caspian, the extremities of Persia, and the confines of Africa; and having assembled, according to usage for hundreds of years, at Cairo as a central point, the whole mass was getting in motion for a pilgrimage of fifty days, through dreary sands, to the tomb of the Prophet.

Accustomed as I was to associate the ideas of order and decorum with the observance of all rites and duties of religion, I could not but feel surprised at the noise, tumult, and confusion, the strifes and battles of these pilgrim-travellers. If I had met them in the desert after their line of march was formed, it would have been an imposing spectacle, and comparatively easy to describe; but here, as far as they could reach, they were scattered over the sandy plain, thirty thousand people, with probably twenty thousand camels and dromedaries, men, women, and children, beasts and baggage, all commingled in a confused mass that seemed hopelessly inextricable. Some had not yet struck their tents, some were making coffee, some smoking, some cooking, some eating, many shouting and cursing, others on their knees praying, and others, again, hurrying on to join the long moving stream that already extended several miles into the desert.

It is a vulgar prejudice, the belief that women are not admitted into the heaven of Mohammed. It is true that the cunning Prophet, in order not to disturb the joyful serenity with which his followers look forward to their promised heaven, has not given to women any fixed position there, and the pious Mussulman, although blessed with the lawful complement of four wives, is not bound to see among his seventy-two black-eyed houries the faces of his companions upon earth; but the women are not utterly cast out; they are deemed to have souls, and entitled to a heaven of their own; and it my be, too, that their visions of futurity are not less bright, for that there is a mystery to be unravelled beyond the grave, and they are not doomed to external companionship with their earthly lords. In the wildest, rudest scene where woman appears at all, ther is a sweet and undefinable charm; and their appearance among the pilgrims, the care with which they shrouded themselves from every eye, their long thick veils, and their tents or four-post beds, with curtains of red silk, fasted down all around and secured on the high backs of camels, were the most striking objects in the caravan. Next to them were the miserable figures of the marabouts, santons, or Arab Saints, having only a scanty covering of rags over their shoulders, and the rest of their bodies completely naked, yet strutting about as if clothed in purple and fine linen; and setting off utterly destitute of everything for a journey of months across the desert, safely trusting to that open-handed charity which forms so conspicuous an item in the list of Mussulman virtues. But the object of universal interest was the great box containing the presents and decorations for the tomb of the Prophet. The camel which bears this sacred burden is adorned with banners and rich housings, is watched and tended with pious care, avid, when his journey is ended, no meaner load can touch his back; he has filled the measure of a camel's glory, and lives and dies respected by all good Mussulmans.

In the evening, being the last of my stay in Cairo, I heard that Mr. Linant, the companion of M. Laborde on his visit to Petra, had arrived at Alexandria, and, with Mr. Gliddon, went to see him. Mr. L. is one of the many French emigres driven from their native soil by political convulsions, and who have risen to distinction in foreign lands by military talents, and the force of that restless energy so peculiar to his countrymen. Many years before, he bad thrown himself into the Arabian Desert, where he had become so much beloved by the Bedouins, that on the occasion of a dispute between two contending claimants, the customs of their tribe were waived, the pretensions of the rivals set aside, and he was elected sheik of Mount Sinai, and invested with the flattering name, which he retains to this day, of Abdel Hag, or the slave of truth. Notwithstanding his desert rank and dignity, he received me with a politeness which savoured of the salons of Paris, and encouraged me in my intention of visiting Petra, assuring me that it would abundantly repay me for all the difficulties attending it; in fact, he spoke lightly of these, although I afterward found that his acquaintance with the language, his high standing among the Bedouins, and his lavish distribution of money and presents, had removed or diminished obstacles which, to a stranger without these advantages, were by no means of a trifling nature. In addition to much general advice, he counselled me particularly to wear the Turkish or Arab dress, and to get a letter from the Habeeb Effendi to the governor of the little fortress of Akaba. Mr. Linant has been twenty years in Egypt, and is now a bey in the pacha's service; and that very afternoon, after a long interview, had received orders from the great reformer to make a survey of the pyramids, for the purpose of deciding which of those gigantic monuments, after having been respected by all preceding tyrants for three thousand years, should now be demolished for the illustrious object of yielding material for a petty fortress, or scarcely more useful and important bridge.*

* On my return to Alexandria, I learned that Mr. Linant had reported that it would be cheaper to get at one stone from the quarries. After all, it is perhaps to be regretted that he had not gone on, as the mystery that overhangs the pyramids will probably never be removed until one of them is pulled down, and every. stone removed, under the direction of some friend of science and the arts.

Early in the morning I went into the bazars, and fitted out Paul and myself with the necessary dresses. Paul was soon equipped with the common Arab dress, the blue cotton shirt, tarbouch, and Bedouin shoes. A native of Malta, he was very probably of Arab descent in part, and his dark complexion and long black beard would enable him readily to pass for one born under the sun of Egypt. As for myself, I could not look the swarthy Arab of the desert, and the dress of the Turkish houaja or gentleman, with the necessary arms and equipments, was very expensive; so I provided myself with the unpretending and respectable costume of a Cairo merchant; a long red silk gown, with a black abbas of camels' hair over it; red tarbouch, with a green and yellow striped handkerchief rolled round it as a turban; white trousers, large red shoes over yellow slippers, blue sash, sword, and a pair of large Turkish pistols.

Having finished my purchases in the bazars, I returned to my hotel ready to set out, and found the dromedaries, camels, and guides, and expected to find the letter for the governor of Akaba, which, at the suggestion of Mr. Linant, I had requested Mr. Gliddon to procure for me. I now learned, however, from that gentleman, that, to avoid delay, it would be better to go myself, first sending my caravan outside the gate, and representing to the minister that I was actually waiting for the letter, in which case he would probably give it to me immediately. I accordingly sent Paul with my little caravan to wait for me at the tombs of the califs, and, attended by the consul's janizary, rode up to the citadel, and stopped at the door of the governor's palace.

The reader may remember that, on my first visit to his excellency, I saw a man whipped; this time I saw one bastinadoed. I had heard much of this, a punishment existing, I believe, only in the East, but I had never seen it inflicted before, and hope I never shall see it again. As on the former occasion, I found the little governor standing at one end of the large hall of entrance, munching, and trying causes (sic?). A crowd was gathered around, and before him was a poor Arab, pleading and beseeching most piteously, while the big tears were rolling down his cheeks; near him was a man whose resolute and somewhat angry expression marked him as the accuser, seeking vengeance rather than justice. Suddenly the governor made a gentle movement with his hand; all noise ceased; all stretched their necks and turned their eager eyes towards him; the accused cut short his crying, and stood with his mouth wide open, and his eyes fixed upon the governor. The latter spoke a few words in a very low voice, to me of course unintelligible, and, indeed, scarcely audible, but they seemed to fall upon the quick ears of the culprit like bolts of thunder; the agony of suspense was over, and, without a word or look, he laid himself down on his face at the feet of the governor. A space was immediately cleared around; a man on each side took him by the hand, and, stretching out his arms, kneeled upon and held them down, while another seated himself across his neck and shoulders. Thus nailed to the ground, the poor fellow, knowing that there was no chance of escape, threw up his feet from the knee-joint, so as to present the soles in a horizontal position. Two men came forward with a pair of long stout bars of wood, attached together by a cord, between which they placed the feet, drawing them together with the cord so as to fix them in their horizontal position, and leave the whole flat surface exposed to the full force of the blow. In the mean time two strong Turks were standing ready, one at each side, armed with long whips much resembling our common cowskin, but longer and thicker, and made of the tough hide of the hippopotamus. While the occupation of the judge was suspended by these preparations, the janizary had presented the consul's letter. My sensibilities are not particularly acute, but they yielded in this instance. I had watched all the preliminary arrangements, nerving myself for what was to come; but when I heard the scourge whizzing through the air, and, when the first blow fell upon the naked feet, saw the convulsive movements of the body, and heard the first loud piercing shriek, I could stand it no longer; I broke through the crowd, forgetting the governor and everything else, except the agonizing sounds from which I was escaping; but the janizary followed close at my heels, and, laying his hand upon my arm, hauled me back to the governor. If I had consulted merely the impulse of feeling, I should have consigned him, and the governor, and the whole nation of Turks, to the lower regions; but it was all important not to offend this summary dispenser of justice, and I never made a greater sacrifice of feeling to expediency than when I re-entered his presence. The shrieks of the unhappy criminal were ringing through the chamber, but the governor received me with as calm a smile as if he had been sitting on his own divan, listening to the strains of some pleasant music, while I stood with my teeth clinched, and felt the hot breath of the victim, and heard the whizzing of the accursed whip, as it fell again and again upon his bleeding feet. I have heard men cry out in agony when the sea was raging, and the drowning man, rising for the last time upon the mountain waves, turned his imploring arms towards us, and with his dying breath called in vain for help; but I never heard such heartrending sounds as those from the poor bastinadoed wretch before me. I thought the governor would never make an end of reading the letter, when the scribe handed it to him for his signature, although it contained but half a dozen lines; he fumbled in his pocket for his seal, and dipped it in the ink; the impression did not suit him, and he made another; and, after a delay that seemed to me eternal, employed in folding it, handed it to me with a most gracious smile. I am sure I grinned horribly in return, and almost snatching the letter just as the last blow fell, I turned to hasten from the scene. The poor scourged wretch was silent; he had found relief in insensibility; I cast one look upon the senseless body, and saw the feet laid open in gashes, and the blood streaming down the legs. At that moment the bars were taken away, and the mangled feet fell like lead upon the floor. I had to work my way through the crowd, and, before I could escape, I saw the poor fellow revive, and by the first natural impulse rise upon his feet, but fall again as if he had stepped upon red-hot irons. He crawled upon his bands and knees to the door of the hall, and here it was most grateful to see that the poor miserable, mangled, and degraded Arab yet had friends whose hearts yearned towards him; they took him in their arms and carried him away.

I was sick of Cairo, and in a right humour to bid farewell to cities, with all their artificial laws, their crimes and punishments, and all the varied shades of inhumanity from man to man, and in a few minutes I was beyond the gate, and galloping away to join my companions in the desert. At the tombs of the califs I found Paul with my caravan; but I had not yet escaped the stormy passions of men. With the cries of the poor Arab still ringing in my ears, I was greeted with a furious quarrel, arising from the apportionment of the money I had paid my guides. I was in no humour to interfere, and, mounting my dromedary, and leaving Paul to arrange the affair with them as he best could, I rode on alone.

It was a journey of no ordinary interest on which I was now beginning my lonely way. I had travelled in Italy, among the mountains of Greece, the plains of Turkey, the wild steppes of Russia, and the plains of Poland, but neither of these afforded half the material for curious expectation that my journey through the desert promised. After an interval of four thousand years, I was about to pursue the devious path of the children of Israel, when they took up the bones of Joseph and fled before the anger of Pharaoh, among the mountain passes of Sinai, and through that great and terrible desert which shut them from the Land of Promise. I rode on in silence and alone for nearly two hours, and, just as the sun was sinking behind the dark, mountains of Mokattam, halted to wait for my little caravan; and I pitched my tent for the first night in the desert, with the door opening to the distant land of Goshen.

CHAPTER XIV.

The Caravan.-Arab Political Economy.-A projected Railroad.-The Sirocco.-Suez.-A travelled Englishman.-The Red Sea.-Embarcation of Pilgrims.-A Misadventure.-Scriptural Localities.-The bitter Fountain.

THE arrangements for my journey as far as Mount Sinai had been made by Mr. Glidden. It was necessary to have as my guides some of the Bedouins from around the mountains, and he had procured one known to him, a man in whom I could place the most implicit confidence; and possessing another not less powerful recommendation, in the fact that he had been with Messrs. Linant and Laborde to Petra. My caravan consisted of eight camels and dromedaries, and, as guide and camel-drivers, three young Bedouins from nineteen to twenty-two years old. My tent was the common tent of the Egyptian soldiers, bought at the government factory, easily carried, and as easily pitched; my bedding was a mattress and coverlet; and I had, moreover, a couple of boxes, about eighteen inches high, and the width of my mattress, filled with eatables, which I carried slung over the back of a camel, one upon each side, and at night, by the addition of two pieces of board, converted into a bedstead. My store of provisions consisted of bread, biscuit, rice, macaroni, tea, coffee, dried apricots, oranges, a roasted leg of mutton, and two of the largest skins containing the filtered water of the Nile.

In the evening, while we were sitting around a fire, I inquired the cause of the quarrel from which I had escaped, and this led Toualeb into an explanation of some of the customs of the Bedouins. There exists among them that community of interest and property for which radicals and visionaries contend in civilized society. The property of the tribe is to a great extent common, and their earnings, or the profits of their labour, are shared among the whole. A Bedouin's wives are his own; and as the chastity of women is guarded by the most sanguinary laws, his children are generally his own; his tent, also, and one or two camels are his, and the rest belongs to his tribe. The practical operation of this law is not attended with any great difficulty; for, in general, the rest, or that which belongs to the tribe, is nothing; there are no hoarded treasures, no coffers of wealth, the bequest of ancestors, or the gains of enterprise and industry, to excite the cupidity of the avaricious. Poor is the Bedouin born, and poor he dies, and his condition is more than usually prosperous when his poverty does not lead him to the shedding of blood.

I did not expect to learn lessons of political economy among the Bedouin Arabs; but, in the commencement of my journey with them, I found the embarrassment and evil of trammelling individual enterprise and industry. The consul had applied to Toualeb. Toualeb was obliged to propose the thing to such of his tribe as were then in Cairo, and all had a right to participate. The consequence was, that when we were ready to move, instead of five there were a dozen camels and dromedaries, and their several owners were the men whom I had left wrangling at the tombs of the califs; and even when it was ascertained that only five were wanted, still three supernumeraries were sent, that all might be engaged in the work. In countries where the labour of man and beast has a per diem value, the loss of the labour of three or four men and three or four camels would be counted; but, in the East, time and labour have no value.

I do not mean to go into any dissertations on the character of the Bedouins, and shall merely refer to such traits as fell under my observation and were developed by circumstances. While I was eating my evening meal, and talking with Toualeb, the three young camel-drivers sat at the door of the tent, leaning on their hands and looking at me. I at first did not pay much attention to them, but it soon struck me as singular that they did not prepare their own meal; and, noticing them more attentively, I thought they were not looking so much at me as at the smoking pilau before me. I asked them why they did not eat their supper; and they told me that their masters had sent them away without a particle of anything to eat. I was exceedingly vexed at this, inasmuch as it showed that I had four mouths to feed more than I had prepared for; no trifling matter on a journey in the desert, and one which Paul, as my quartermaster, said it was utterly impossible to accomplish. I at first told one of them to mount my dromedary and go back to Cairo, assuring him that, if he did not return before daylight, I would follow and have both him and his master bastinadoed; but before he bad mounted I changed my mind. I hated all returns and delays, and, smothering my wrath, told Paul to give them some rice and biscuit, at the risk of being obliged to come down to Arab bread myself. And so ended the first day of my journey.

Early in the morning we began our march, with our faces towards the rising sun. Before midday we were in as perfect a desert as if we were removed thousands of miles from the habitations of men; behind, before, arid around us was one wide expanse of level and arid sands, although we were as yet not more than eight hours from the crowded city of Cairo; and I might already cry out, in the spirit of Neikomm's famous cavatina, "The sea, the sea, the open sea!" Indeed, in all the travelling in the East, nothing strikes one more forcibly than the quick transitions from the noise of cities to the stillness of the unpeopled waste.

It does, indeed, appear remarkable that, within so short a distance from Cairo, a city of so great antiquity and large a population, and on a road which we know to have been travelled more than four thousand years, and which at this day is the principal route to the Red Sea, there is so little travelling. During the whole day we did not meet more than a dozen Arabs, with perhaps twenty or thirty camels. But a mighty change will soon be made in this particular. A railroad is about to he constructed across the desert, over the track followed by the children of Israel to the Sea. The pacha had already ordered iron from England for the purpose when I was in Egypt, and there is no doubt of its practicability, being only a distance of eighty miles over a dead level; but whether it will ever be finished, or whether, if finished, it will pay the expense, is much more questionable. Indeed, the, better opinion is, that the pacha does it merely to bolster tip his reputation in Europe as a reformer; that he has begun without calculating the costs and that he will get tired and abandon it before it is half completed. It may be, however, that the reader will one day be hurried by a steam-engine over the route which I was now crossing at the slow pace of a camel; and when that day comes, all the excitement and wonder of a journey in the desert will be over. There will be no more pitching of tents, or sleeping under the starry firmament, surrounded by Arabs and camels; no more carrying provisions, and no danger of dying of thirst; all will be reduced to the systematic tameness of a cotton-factory, and the wild Arab will retire farther into the heart of the desert, shunning, like our native Indians, the faces of strangers, and following for ever the footsteps of his wandering ancestors. Blessed be my fortune, improvement had not yet actually begun its march.

In the course of the night I was suddenly awakened by a loud noise like the flapping of sails. A high wind had risen, and my tent not being well secured, it had turned over, so that the wind got under it and carried it away. In the civilized world, we often hear of reverses of fortune, which reduce a man to such a state that he has not a roof to cover him; but few are ever deprived of the protection of their roof in so summary a way as this, and it is but fair to add that few have ever got it back so expeditiously. I opened my eyes upon the stars, and saw my house fleeing from me. Paul and I were on our feet in a moment, and gave chase, and, with the assistance of our Arabs, brought it back and planted it again; I thought of the prudent Kentuckian who tied his house to a stump to keep it from being blown away, and would have done the same thing if I could have found a stump; but tree or stump in the desert there is none.

I was not disturbed again during the night; but the wind continued to increase, and towards morning and all the next day blew with great violence. It was the dread sirocco, the wind that has for ever continued to blow over the desert, carrying with it the fine particles of sand which, by the continued action of centuries, have buried the monuments, the temples, and the cities of Egypt; the sirocco, always disagreeable and dangerous, and sometimes, if the reports of travellers be true, suffocating and burying whole caravans of men and camels. Fortunately for me, it was blowing upon my back; but still it was necessary to draw my Arab cloak close over my head; and even then the particles of sand found their way within, so that my eyes were soon filled with them. This was very far from being one of the worst siroccos; but the sun was obscured, the atmosphere was a perfect cloud of sand, and the tracks were so completely obliterated, that a little after midday we were obliged to stop and take shelter under the lee of a hillock of sand; occasionally we had met caravans coming upon us through the thick clouds of sand, the Arabs riding with their backs to the heads of their camels, and their faces covered, so that not a single feature could be seen.

By the third morning the wind had somewhat abated, but the sand had become so scattered that not a single track could be seen. I was forcibly reminded of a circumstance related to me by Mr. Waghorn. A short time before I met him at Cairo, in making a hurried march from Suez, with an Arab unaccustomed to the desert, he encamped about midway, and starting two hours before daylight, continued travelling, half asleep, upon his dromedary, until it happened to strike him that the sun had risen in the wrong place, and was then shining in his face instead of warming his back; he had been more than three hours retracing his steps to Suez. If I had been along this morning, I might very easily have fallen into the same or a worse error. The prospect before me was precisely the same, turn which way I would; and, if I had been left to myself, I might have wandered as long as the children of Israel in search of the Promised Land before I should have arrived at the gate of Suez.

We soon came in sight of the principal, perhaps the only object, which a stranger would mark in the route from Cairo to Suez. It is a large palm-tree, standing alone about half way across, the only green and living thing on that expanse of barrenness. We saw it two or three hours; and, moving with the slow pace of our camels, it seemed as if we should never reach it; and then, again, as if we should never leave it behind us. A journey in the desert is so barren of incident, that wayfarers note the smallest circumstances, and our relative distance from the palm-tree, or half-way house, furnished occupation for a great part of the day.

At about twelve o'clock the next day we caught the first view of the Red Sea, rolling between the dark mountains of Egypt and Arabia, as in the days of Pharaoh and Moses. In an hour more we came in sight of Suez, a low dark spot on the shore, above the commencement of the chains of mountains on each side. About two hours before arriving, we passed, at a little distance on the left, a large khan, on the direct road to Akaba, built by the pacha as a stopping-place for the pilgrims on their way to Mecca. Three days before, more than thirty thousand pilgrims had halted in and around it, but now not a living being was to be seen. About half an hour on the hither side of the Suez we came to a well, where for the first time since we left Cairo, we watered our camels.

Even among the miserable cities of Turkey and Egypt, few present so wretched an appearance as Suez. Standing on the borders of the desert, and on the shore of the sea, with bad and unwholesome water, not a blade of grass growing around it, and dependant upon Cairo for the food that supports its inhabitants, it sustains a poor existence by the trade of the great caravan for Mecca, and the small commerce between the ports of Cosseir, Djiddeh, and Mocha. A new project has lately been attempted here, which it might be supposed, would have a tendency to regenerate the fallen city. The route to India by the Red Sea is in the full tide of successful experiment; the English flag is often seen waving in the harbour; and about once in two months an English steamer arrives from Bombay; but even the clatter of a steamboat is unable to infuse life into its sluggish population.

The gate was open, a single soldier was lying on a mat basking in the sun, his musket gleaming brightly by his side, and a single cannon projected over the wall, frowning with Tom Thumb greatness upon the stranger entering the city. Passing the gate, we found ourselves within a large open space crowded with pilgrims. Even the small space enclosed by the walls was not more than one quarter occupied by buildings, and these few were at the farthest extremity. The whole intermediate area was occupied by pilgrims, scattered about in ever imaginable position and occupation, who stared at me as I passed among them in my European dress, and noticed me according to their various humours, some greeting me with a smile, some with a low and respectful salaam, and others with the black look and ferocious scowl of the bigoted and Frank-detesting Mussulmans.

We stopped in the square in front of the harbour, and inquired for an Englishman, the agent of Mr. Waghorn, to whom I had a letter, and from whom I hoped to obtain a bed; but he had arrived only two days before, and I doubt whether he had one for himself. He did all be could for me, but that was very little. I remember one thing about him, which is characteristic of a class of European residents in Egypt; he had lived fourteen years between Alexandria and Cairo, and had never been in the desert before, and talked as if he had made a voyage to Babylon or Bagdad. He had provided himself with almost everything that his English notions of comfort could suggest, and with these he talked of his three days journey in the desert as a thing to be done but once in a man's life. I ought not to be harsh on him, however, for he was as kind as he could be to me, and in one thing I felt very sensibly the benefit of his kindness. By bad management my water-skins, instead of being old and seasoned, were entirely new; the second day out the water was injured, and the third it was not drinkable. I did not suffer so much as Paul and the Arabs did, having fallen into the habit of drinking but little, and assuaging my thirst with an orange; but I suffered from a cause much worse; my eyes were badly inflamed, and the water was so much impregnated with the noxious absorption from the leather, that it destroyed the effect of the powders which I diluted in it, and aggravated instead of relieving the inflammation. The Englishman had used kegs made for the purpose, and had more than a kegful left, which he insisted on my taking. One can hardly imagine that the giving or receiving a keg of water should be a matter of any moment; but, much as I wanted it, indeed, all-important as it was to me for the rest of my journey, I hesitated to deprive him of it. Before going, however, I filled one of my skins, and counted it at the time one of the most valuable presents I had ever received. He had been in the desert, too, the same day that we suffered from the sirocco, and his eyes were in a worse condition than mine.

The first thing I did was to find me a place to pass the night in. Directly opposite the open space was a large roquel or stone building, containing a ground and upper floor, and open in the centre, forming a hollow square. The whole building was divided by partitions into perhaps one hundred apartments, and every one of these and the open square outside were filled with pilgrims. The apartments consisted merely of a floor, roof, door, and walls, and sometimes one or the other of these requisites was wanting, and its deficiency supplied by the excess of another. My room was in one corner in the second story, and had a most unnecessary and uncomfortable proportion of windows; but I had no choice. I regretted that I had not pitched my tent outside the wails; but, calling to my assistance the ingenuity and contriving spirit of my country, fastened it up is a screen to keep the wind from coming upon me too severely, and walked out to see the little that was to be seen of Suez.

I had soon made a tour of the town; and, having performed this duty, I hurried where my thoughts and feelings had long been carrying me, to the shore of the sea. Half a dozen vessels of some eighty or a hundred tons, sharp built, with tall spars for latteen sails, high poops, and strangely painted resembling the ancient ships of war, or the Turkish cosair or Arab pirate of modern days, were riding at anchor in the harbour, waiting to take on board the thousands of pilgrims who were all around me. I followed the shore till I had turned the walls, and was entirely alone. I sat down under the wall, where I had an extensive view down the sea, and saw the place where the waters divided for the passage of the Israelites. Two hours I strolled along the shore, and, when the sun was sinking behind the dark mountains of Mokattam, I was bathing my feet in the waters of the coral sea.

Early in the morning I went out on the balcony, and looking down into the open square, filled with groups of pilgrims, male and female, sleeping on the bare ground, in all manner of attitudes, I saw directly under me a dead Tartar. He had died during the night, his deathbed a single plank, and he was lying in the sheepskin dress which he wore when living. Two friends from the frozen regions of the north, companions in his long pilgrimage, were sitting on the ground preparing their morning coffee, and my Arabs were sleeping by his side, unconscious that but a few feet from them, during the stillness of the night, an immortal spirit had been called away. I gazed long and steadfastly upon the face of the dead Tartar, and moralized very solemnly-indeed, painfully-upon the imaginary incidents which my fancy summoned up in connexion with his fate. Nor was the possibility of my own death, among strangers in a distant land, the least prominent or least saddening portion of my revery.

I ascribe this uncommon moping-fit to my exposing myself before breakfast. The stomach must be fortified, or force, moral and physical, is gone, and melancholy and blue devils are the inevitable consequence. After breakfast I was another creature. My acute sensibility, my tender sympathies, were gone; and, when I went out again, I looked upon the body of the dead Tartar with the utmost indifference.

The pilgrims were now nearly all stirring, and the square was all in motion. The balcony, and, indeed, every part of the old roquel, were filled with the better class of pilgrims, principally Turks, the lords of the land; and in an apartment opening of the balcony, immediately next to mine, sat a beautiful Circassian, with the regular features and brilliant complexion of her country. By her side were two lovely children, fair and beautiful as their mother. Her face was completely uncovered, for she did not know that a stranger was gazing on her, and, turning from the black visages around him to her fair and lovely face, was revealing in recollections of the beauties of his native land. And lo, the virtue of a breakfast! I, that by looking upon a dead Tartar had buried myself in the deserts of Arabia, written my epitaph, and cried over my own grave, was now ready to break a lance with a Turk to rob him of his wife.

The balcony and staircase were thronged with pilgrims, many still asleep, so that I was obliged to step over their bodies in going down, and out of doors the case was much the same. At home I should have thought it a peculiarly interesting circumstance to join a caravan of Mussulmans on their pilgrimage to Mecca; but, long before I had seen them start from the gate of Cairo, my feelings were essentially changed. I had hired my caravan for Mount Sinai but, feeling rather weak, and wishing to save myself six days' journey in the desert, I endeavoured to hire a boat to go down the Red Sea to Tor, supposed to be the Elim, or place of palm-trees, mentioned in the Exodus of the Israelites, and only two days' journey from Mount Sinai. The boats were all taken by the pilgrims, and these holy travellers were packed together as closely as sheep on board one of our North River sloops for the New-York market. They were a filthy set, many of them probably not changing their clothes from the time they left their homes until they reached the tomb of the Prophet. I would rather not have travelled with them; but, as it was my only way of going down the sea, I applied to an Arab, to hire a certain portion of space on the deck of a boat for myself and servant; but he advised me not to think of such a thing. he told me if I hired and paid for such a space, the pilgrims would certain1v encroach upon me; that they would beg, and borrow, and at last rob me; and, above all, that they were bigoted fanatics, and, if a storm occurred, would very likely throw me overboard. With this character of his brethren from a true believer, I abandoned the idea of going by sea, and that the more readily, as his account was perfectly consistent with what I had before heard of the pilgrims.

The scene itself did not sustain the high and holy character of a pilgrimage. As I said before, all were abominably filthy; some were sitting around a great dish of pilau, thrusting their hands in it up to the knuckles, squeezing the boiled rice, and throwing back their heads as they crammed the huge morsel down their throats; others packing up their merchandise, or carrying water-skins, or whetting their sabres; others wrangling for a few paras; and in one place was an Arab butcher, bare-legged and naked from the waist upward, with his hands, breast, and face smeared with blood, leaning over the body of a slaughtered camel, brandishing an axe, and chopping off huge pieces of meat for the surrounding pilgrims. A little off from the shore a large party were embarking on board a small boat to go down to their vessel, which was lying at the mouth of the harbour; they were wading up to their middle, every one with something on his shoulders or above his head. Thirty or forty had already got on board, and as many more were trying to do the same; but the boat was already full. A loud wrangling commenced, succeeded by clinching, throttling, splashing in the water, and running to the shore. I saw bright swords gleaming in the air, heard the ominous click of a pistol, and in one moment more blood would have been shed but for a Turkish aga, who had been watching the scene from the governor's balcony, and now dashing in among them with a huge silver-headed mace, and laying about him right and left, brought the turbulent pilgrims to a condition more suited to their sacred character.

At about nine o'clock I sent off my camels to go round the head of the gulf, intending to cross over in a boat and meet them. At the moment they left the roquel, two friends were holding up a quilt before the body of the dead Tartar, while a third was within, washing and preparing it for burial. At twelve o'clock I got on board my boat; she was like the others, sharp built, with a high poop and tall latteen sails, and, for the first time in all my travelling I began to think a voyage better than a journey. In addition to the greater ease and pleasantness, there was something new and exciting in the passage of the Red Sea; and we had hardly given our large latteen sails to the wind, before I began to talk with the rais about carrying me down to Tor; but he told me the boat was too small for such a voyage, and money would not induce him to attempt it.

Late in the afternoon we landed on the opposite side, on the most sacred spot connected with the wanderings of the Israelites, where they rose from the dry bed of the sea, and, at the command of Moses, the divided waters rushed together, overwhelming Pharaoh and his chariots, and the whole host of Egypt. With the devotion of a pious pilgrim, I picked up a shell and put it in my pocket as a memorial of the place, and then Paul and I, mounting the dromedaries which my guide had brought down to the shore in readiness, rode to a grove of palm-trees, shading a fountain of bad water, called ayoun Moussa, or the fountain of Moses. I was riding carelessly along, looking behind me towards the sea, and had almost reached the grove of palm-trees, when a large flock of crows flew out, and my dromedary, frightened with their sudden whizzing, started back and threw me twenty feet over his head, completely clear of his long neck, and left me sprawling in the sand. It was a mercy I did not finish my wanderings where the children of Israel began theirs; but I saved my head at the expense of my hands, which sank in the loose soil up to the wrist, and bore the marks for more than two months afterward. I seated myself where I fell, and, as the sun was just dipping below the horizon, told Paul to pitch the tent, with the door towards the place of the miraculous passage. I shall never forget that sunset scene, and it is the last I shall inflict upon the reader. I was sitting on the very spot where the chosen people of God, after walking over the dry bed of the sea, stopped to behold the divided waters returning to their place and swallowing up the host of the pursuers. The mountains on the other side looked dark and portentous, as if proud and conscious witnesses of the mighty miracle, while the sun, descending slowly behind them, long after it had disappeared, left a reflected brightness, which illumined with an almost supernatural light the dark surface of the water.

But to return to the fountain of Moses. I am aware that there is some dispute as to the precise spot where Moses crossed; but, having no time for skepticism on such matters, I began by making up my mind that this was the place, and then looked around to see whether, according to the account given in the Bible, the face of the country and the natural landmarks did not sustain my opinion. I remember I looked up to the head of the gulf, where Suez or Kolsum now stands, and saw that almost to the very head of the gulf there was a high range of mountains which it would be necessary to cross, an undertaking which it would have been physically impossible for six hundred thousand people, men, women, and children, to accomplish, with a hostile army pursuing them. At Suez, Moses could not have been hemmed in as he was; he could go off into the Syrian Desert, or, unless the sea has greatly changed since that time, round the head of the gulf. But here, directly opposite where I sat, was an opening in the mountains, making a clear passage from the desert to the shore of the sea. It is admitted that, from the earliest history of the country, there was a caravan route from the Rameseh of the Pharaohs to this spot, and it was perfectly clear to my mind that, if the account be true at all, Moses had taken that route; that it was directly opposite me, between the two mountains, where he had come down with his multitude to the shore, and that it was there he had found himself hemmed in, in the manner described in the Bible, with the sea before him, and the army of Pharaoh in his rear; it was there he had stretched out his hand and divided the waters; and probably, on the very spot where I sat, the children of Israel had kneeled upon the sands to offer thanks to God for his miraculous interposition. The distance, too, was in confirmation of this opinion. It was about twenty miles across; the distance which that immense multitude, with their necessary baggage, could have passed in the space of time (a night) mentioned in the Bible. Besides my own judgment and conclusions, I had authority on the spot, in my Bedouin Toualeb, who talked of it with as much certainty as if he had seen it himself; and, by the waning light of the moon, pointed out the metes and bounds according to the tradition received from his fathers. " And even yet," said he, "on a still evening like this, or sometimes when sea is raging, the ghosts of the departed Egyptians are seen walking upon the waters; and once, when, after a long day's journey, I lay down with my camels on this very spot, I saw the ghost of Fharaoh himself, with the crown upon his head, flying with his chariot and horses over the face of the deep; and even to this day the Arab, diving for coral, brings up fragments of swords, broken helmets, or chariot-wheels, swallowed up with the host of Egypt."

Early the next morning we resumed our journey, and travelled several hours along a sandy valley, diverging slowly from the sea and approaching the mountains on our left. The day's journey was barren of incident, though not void of interest. We met only one small caravan of Bedouins, with their empty sacks, like the children of Jacob of old, journeying from a land of famine to a land of plenty. From time to time we passed the bones of a camel bleaching on the sand, and once the body of one just dead, his eyes already picked out, and their sockets hollow to the brain. A huge vulture was standing over him, with his long talons fastened in the entrails, his beak and his whole bead stained with blood. I drove the horrid bird away; but, before I had got out of sight, he had again fastened on his prey.

The third day we started at seven o'clock, and, after three hours of journeying, entered among the mountains of Sinai. The scene was now entirely changed in character; the level expanse of the sandy desert for the wild and rugged mountain-pass. At eleven we came to the fountain of Marah, supposed to be that at which the Israelites rested after their three days' journey from the Red Sea. There is some uncertainty as to the particulars of this journey; the print of their footsteps did not long remain in the shifting sands their descendants have long been strangers in the land and tradition but imperfectly supplies the want of more accurate and enduring records. Of the general fact there is no doubt; no other road from the Red Sea to Mount Sinai has existed since the days of Moses, and there is no part of the world where the face of nature and the natural landmarks have remained so totally unchanged. Then, as now, it was a barren mountainous region, bare of verdure and destitute of streams of living water; so that the Almighty was obliged to sustain his people with manna from heaven and water from the rocks.

But travellers have questioned whether this is the fountain Of Marah. The Bible account is simple and brief. "They went three days into the wilderness, and found no water; and when they came to Marah, they could not drink of the waters of Marah, for they were bitter." Burckbardt objects that the distance is too short for three days' journey, but this cavil is sufficiently answered by others; that the movements of such an immense multitude, of all ages and both sexes, with flocks and cattle, which they must have had for the sacrifices, if for no other purpose, must necessarily have been slow. Besides, supposing the habits of the people to have been the same as we find them now among Orientals, the presumption is rather that they would march slowly than push on with speed, after the danger of pursuit was over. Time is thought of little consequence by the Arabs; and, as the Jews were Arabs, it is probable that the same was a feature of their character also. At all events, I was disposed to consider this the fountain, and would fain have performed the duty of a pious pilgrim by making my noonday meal at its brink; but, as in the days of Moses, we could not drink of the waters of Marah, " for they were bitter." I do not wonder that the people murmured, for even our camels would not drink of them. The ground around the fountain was white with salt. In about two hours more we came to the valley of Gherondel, a large valley with palm trees; away at the right, in the mountains, is another spring of water, which Shaw makes the bitter fountain of Moses, the water being also undrinkable.

That night Paul was unwell; and, as it always happened with him when he had a headache, he thought he was going to die. As soon as we pitched our tent I made him lie down; and, not knowing how to deal with his real and fancied ailments, gave him some hot tea, and then piled upon him quilts, blankets, empty sacks, saddle-cloths, and every other covering I could find, until he cried for quarter. I had no difficulty in cooking my own supper, and, I remember, tried the savage taste of my Bedouins with the China weed, which they liked exceedingly when so abundantly sweetened as utterly to destroy its flavour.

CHAPTER XV.

The Aspect of the Mountains.-Arab Graves.-The Pacha and the Bedouins.-The Value of Water.-Perplexing Inscriptions.-Habits of the Arabs.--Ethics of the Desert.-Breach of the Marriage vow.-Arrival at the Convent.-An Excess of Welcome.-Greece and America.-Amor Patriae.

IN the morning Paul was well, but I recommended a little starvation to make all sure; this, however, by no means agreed with his opinion, or his appetite; for, as he said, a man who rode a dromedary all day must eat or die. Late in the afternoon we passed a hill of stones, which Burckhardt calls the tomb of a saint; but, according to Toualeb's account, and he spoke of it as a thing within his own knowledge, it was the tomb of a very different personage, namely, a woman who was surprised by her kindred with a paramour, and killed and buried on the spot; on a little eminence above, a few stones marked the place where a slave bad been stationed to give the guilty pair a timely notice of approaching danger, but had neglected his important trust.

Our road now lay between wild and rugged mountains, and the valley itself was stony, broken, and gullied by the washing of the winter torrents; and a few straggling thorn-bushes were all that grew in that region of desolation. I had remarked for some time, and every moment impressed it more and more forcibly upon my mind, that everything around me seemed old and in decay: the valley was barren and devastated by torrents; the rocks were rent; the mountains cracked, broken, and crumbling into thousands of pieces and we encamped at night between rocks which seemed to have been torn asunder by some violent convulsion, where the stones had washed down into the valley, and the drifted sand almost choked the passage. It had been excessively hot during the day, and at night the wind was whistling around my tent as in mid-winter.

Early in the morning we were again in motion, our route lying nearly all day in the same narrow valley, bounded by the same lofty mountains. At every step the scene became more solemn and impressive; all was still around us; and not a sound broke the universal silence, except the soft tread of our camels, and now and then the voice of one of us; but there was little encouragement to garrulity. The mountains became more and more striking, venerable, and interesting. Not a shrub or blade of grass grew on their naked sides, deformed with gaps and fissures; and they looked as if, by a slight jar or shake, they would crumble into millions of pieces. It is impossible to describe correctly the singularly interesting appearance of these mountains. Age, hoary and venerable, is the predominant character. They looked as if their great Creator had made them higher than they are, and their summits, worn and weakened by the action of the elements for thousands of years, had cracked and fallen. My days in the desert did not pass as quickly as I hurry through them here. They wore away, not slowly alone, but sometimes heavily; and, to help them in their progress, I sometimes descended to very commonplace amusements. On one occasion I remember meeting a party of friendly Bedouins, and, sitting down with them to pipes and coffee, I noticed a fine lad of nineteen or twenty, about the size of one of my party, and pitted mine against him for a wrestling-match. The old Bedouins took the precaution to remove their knives and swords, and it was well they did, for the two lads throttled each other like young furies; and when mine received a pretty severe prostration on the sand, he first attempted to regain his sword, and, falling in that, sprang again upon his adversary with such ferocity that I was glad to have the young devils taken apart, and still more glad to know that they were going to travel different roads.

Several times we passed the rude burying-grounds of the Bedouins, standing alone in the waste of sand, a few stones thrown together in a heap marking the spot where an Arab's bones reposed; but the wanderer of the desert looks forward to his final rest in this wild burying-place of his tribe with the same feeling that animates the English peasant towards the churchyard of his native village, or the noble peer towards the honoured tomb of his ancestors.

About noon we came to an irregular stone fence, running across the valley and extending up the sides nearly to the top of the adjacent mountains, built as a wall by the Bedouins of Sinai during their war with the Pacha of Egypt. Among the strong and energetic measures of his government, Mohammed Aly had endeavoured to reduce these children of the desert under his iron rule; to subject them to taxes, like his subjects of the Nile, and, worse, to establish his oppressive system of military conscription. But the free spirit of the untameable could not brook this invasion of their independence. They plundered his caravans, drank his best Mocha coffee, devoured his spices from Arabia and India, and clothed themselves and their wives in the rich silks intended for the harems of the wealthy Turks. Hassan Bey was sent against them with twenty-five hundred men; four hundred Bedouins defended this pass for several days, when, craftily permitting him to force his way to the convent of Mount Sinai, the tribes gathered in force between him and the Red Sea, and held him there a prisoner until a treaty of perpetual amity had been ratified by the pacha, by which it was agreed that the pacha should not invade their territory and that they would be his subjects, provided he would not call upon them for duties, or soldiers, or, in deed, for anything which should abridge their natural freedom; or, in other words, that he might do as he pleased with them, provided he let them have their own way. It was, in fact, the schoolboy's bargain, "Let me alone and I will let you alone," and so it has been faithfully kept by both parties, and I have no doubt will continue to be kept, until one of them shall have a strong probability of profit and success in breaking it. Upon the whole, however, the Bedouins of Mount Sinai are rather afraid of Mohammed Aly, and he has a great rod over them in his power of excluding them from Cairo, where they come to exchange their dates and apricots for grain, clothing, weapons, and ammunition. As they told me themselves, before his time they had been great robbers, and now a robbery is seldom heard of among them.

For two days we had been suffering for want of water. The skins with which I had been provided by the consul's janizary at Cairo were so new that they contaminated the water; and it had at last become so bad, that, fearful of injurious effects from drinking it, and preferring the evil of thirst to that of sickness, I had poured it all out upon the sand. Toualeb had told me that some time during the day we should come to a fountain, but the evening was drawing nigh and we had not reached it. Fortunately, we had still a few oranges left, which served to moisten our parched mouths, and we were in the momentary expectation of coming to the water, when Toualeb discovered some marks, from which he told us that it was yet three hours distant. We had no apprehension of being reduced to the extremity of thirst; but, for men who had already been suffering for some time, the prolongation of such thirst was by no means pleasant. During those three hours I thought of nothing but water. Rivers were floating through my imagination, and, while moving slowly upon my dromedary, with the hot sun beating upon my head, I wiped the sweat from my face, and thought upon the frosty Caucasus; and when after travelling an hour aside from the main track, through an opening in the mountains, we saw a single palm-tree shading a fountain, our progress was gradually accelerated, until, as we approached, we broke into a run, and dashing through the sand, and without much respect of persons, all threw ourselves upon the fountain.

If any of my friends at home, could have seen me then, they would have laughed to see me scrambling among a party of Arabs for a place around a fountain, all prostrate on the ground, with our heads together, for a moment raising them to look gravely at each other while we paused for breath, and then burying our noses again in the delicious water; and yet, when my thirst was satisfied, and I had time to look at it, I thought it lucky that I had not seen it before. It was not a fountain, but merely a deposit of water in a hollow sandstone rock; the surface was green, and the bottom muddy. Such as it was, however, we filled our skins and returned to the main track.

We continued about an hour in the valley, rising gently until we found ourselves on the top of a little eminence, from which we saw before us another valley, bounded also by high rocky cliffs; and directly in front, still more than a day's journey distant, standing directly across the road, and, as has been forcibly and truly said, "looking like the end of the world," stood the towering mountains of Sinai. At the other end of the plain the mountains contracted, and on one side was an immense block of porphyry, which had fallen, probably, thousands of years ago. I could see where it had come leaping and crashing down mountain-side, and trace its destructive course to the spot where it now lay, itself almost a mountain, a mere pebble when compared with the giant from which it came. I pitched my tent by its side, with the door open to the holy mountain, as many a weary pilgrim had done before me. The rock was covered with inscriptions; but I could not read them. I walked round and round it with Paul at my elbow, looking eagerly for some small scrap, a single line, in a language we could read; but all were strange, and at length we gave up the search. In several places in the wilderness of Sinai the rocks are filled with inscriptions, supposed to have been made by the Jews; and finding those before me utterly beyond my comprehension, I resolved to carry them back to a respectable antiquity, and in many of the worn and faded characters to recognise the work of some wandering Israelite. I meditated, also, a desperate but noble deed. Those who had written before me were long since dead; but in this lonely desert they had left a record of themselves and of their language. I resolved to add one of my country's also. Dwelling fondly in imagination upon the absorbing interest with which some future traveller, perhaps from my own distant land, would stop to read on this lonely rock a greeting in his native tongue, I sought with great care a stone that would serve as a pencil. It made a mark which did not suit me, and I laid it down to break it into a better shape, but unluckily smashed my fingers, and in one moment all my enthusiasm of sentiment was gone; I crammed my fingers into my mouth, and danced about the rock in an agony of heroics; and so my inscription remained unwritten.

At seven o'clock of the tenth day from Cairo I was again on my dromedary, and during the whole day the lofty top of Sinai was constantly before me. We were now in a country of friendly Arabs. The Bedouins around Mount Sinai were all of the same tribe, and the escort of any child of that tribe was a sufficient protection. About nine o'clock Toualeb left me for his tent among the mountains. He was a little at a loss, having two wives living in separate tents, at some distance from each other, and he hesitated which to visit, I made it my business to pry into particulars, and found the substance of the Arab's nature not much different from other men's. Old ties and a sense of duty called him to his old wife; to her who had been his only wife when he was young and poor; but something stronger than old ties or the obligation of duty impelled him to his younger bride. Like the Prophet whom he worshipped, he honoured and respected his old wife, but his heart yearned to her younger and more lovely rival.

The last was by far the most interesting day of my journey to Mount Sinai. We were moving along a broad valley, bounded by ranges of lofty and crumbling mountains forming an immense rocky rampart on each side of us; and rocky and barren as these mountains seemed, on their tops were gardens which produced oranges, dates, and figs in great abundance. Here, on heights almost inaccessible to any but the children of the desert, the Bedouin pitches his tent, pastures his sheep and goats, and the slender subsistence necessary for himself; and often, looking up the bare side of the mountain, we could see on its summit's edge the wild figure of a half-naked Arab, with his long matchlock gun in his hand, watching the movement of our little caravan. Sometimes, too, the eye rested upon the form of a woman stealing across the valley, not a traveller or passer-by, but a dweller in the land where no smoke curled from the domestic hearth, and no sign of a habitation was perceptible. There was something very interesting to me in the greetings of my companions with the other young men of their tribe. They were just returning from a journey to Cairo, an event in the life of a young Bedouin; and they were bringing a stranger from a land that none of them had ever heard of; yet their greeting had the coldness of frosty age and the reserve of strangers; twice they would gently touch the palms of each other's hands, mutter a few words, and in a moment the welcomers were again climbing to their tents. One, I remember, greeted us more warmly and staved longer among us. He was by profession a beggar or robber, as occasion required, and wanted something from us, but it was not much merely some bread and a charge of powder. Not far from the track we saw, hanging on a tborn-bush, the black cloth of a Bedouin's tent, with the pole, ropes, pegs, and everything necessary to convert it into a habitation for a family. It had been there six months; the owner had gone to a new pasture-ground, and there it had hung, and there it would hang, sacred and untouched, until he returned to claim it. "It belongs to one of our tribe, and cursed be the hand that touches it," is the feeling of every Bedouin. Uncounted gold might be exposed in the same way; and the poorest Bedouin, though a robber by birth and profession, would pass by and touch it not.

On the very summit of the mountain, apparently ensconced behind it as a wall, his body not more than half visible, a Bedouin was looking down upon us and one of my party, who had long kept his face turned that way, told me that there was the tent of his father. I talked with him about his kindred and his mountain home, not expecting, however, to discover anything of extraordinary interest or novelty. The sons of Ishmael have ever been the same, inhabitants of the desert, despising the dwellers under a roof, wanderers and wild men from their birth, with their hands against every man, and every man's hand against them.

There is blood between us," says the Bedouin when he meets in the desert one of a tribe, by some individual of which an ancestor of his own was killed, perhaps a hundred years before. And then they draw their swords, and a new account of blood is opened, to be handed down as a legacy to their children. "Thy aunt wants thy purse," says the Bedouin when he meets the stranger travelling through his wild domain. The desert is ours, and every man who passes over it must pay us tribute." These principal and distinguishing traits of the Bedouin character have long been known; but as I had now been with them ten days, and expected to be with them a month longer, to see them in their tents, and be thrown among different tribes, claiming friendship from those who were enemies to each other, I was curious to know something of the lighter shades, the details of their lives and habits; and I listened with exceeding interest while the young Bedouin, with his eyes constantly fixed upon it, told me that for more than four hundred years the tent of his fathers had been in that mountain. Wild and unsettled, robbers and plunderers as they are, they have laws which are as sacred as our own; and the tent, and the garden, and the little pasture-ground are transmitted from father to son for centuries. I have probably forgotten more than half of our conversation; but I remember he told me that all the sons shared equally that the daughters took nothing; that the children lived together; that if any of the brothers got married, the property must be divided; that if any difficulty arose on the division, the man who worked the place for a share of the profits must divide it; and, lastly, that the sisters must remain with the brothers until they (the sisters) are married. I asked him, if the brothers did not choose to keep a sister with them, what became of her; but he did not understand me. I repeated the question, but still he did not comprehend it, and looked to his companions for an explanation. And when, at last, the meaning of my question became apparent to his mind, he answered, with a look of wonder, It is impossible-she is his own blood." I pressed my question again and again in various forms, suggesting the possibility that the brother's wife might dislike the sister, and other very supposable cases but it was so strange an idea, that to the last he did not fully comprehend it, and his answer was still the same- "It is impossible-she is his own blood." Paul was in ecstasies at the noble answers of the young savage, and declared him the finest fellow he had ever met since he left Cairo. This was not very high praise, to be sure; but Paul intended it as a compliment, and the Young Bedouin was willing to believe him, though, he could not exactly comprehend how Paul had found it out.

I asked him who governed them; he stretched himself up and answered in one word, " God." I asked him if they paid tribute to the pacha; and his answer was, "No, we take tribute from him." I asked him how " We plunder his caravans." Desirous to understand my exact position with the sheik of Akaba, under his promise of protection, I asked him if they were governed by their sheik; to which be answered, "No, we govern him." The sheik was their representative, their mouthpiece with the pacha and with other tribes, and had a personal influence, but not more than any other member of the tribe. I asked him, if the sheik had promised a stranger to conduct him through his territory, whether the tribe would not consider themselves bound by his promise. He said no; they would take the sheik apart, ask him what he was going to do with the stranger; how much he was going to get; and, if they were satisfied, would let him pass; otherwise they would send him back; but they would respect the promise of the sheik so far as not to do him any personal injury. In case of any quarrel or difference between members of a tribe, they had no law or tribunal to adjust it; but if one of them was wounded-and he spoke as if this was the regular consequence of a quarrel-upon his recovery, he, made out his account, charging a per diem price for the loss of his services, and the other must pay it. But what if be will not? "He must," was the reply, given in the same tone with which he had before pronounced it "impossible" for the brother to withhold protection and shelter from his sister. If he does not he will be visited with the contempt of his tribe, and very soon he or one of his near relations will be killed. They have a law which is as powerful in its operations as any that we have, and it is a strange and not uninteresting feature in their social compact, that what we call public opinion should be as powerful among them as among civilized people, and that even the wild and lawless Bedouin, a man who may fight, rob, and kill with impunity cannot live under the contempt of his tribe.

In regard to their yet more domestic habits, he told me that though the law of Mohammed allowed four wives, the Bedouin seldom took more than one, unless that one was barren or could not make good bread, or unless he fell in love with another girl, or could afford to keep more than one; with these and some few other extraordinary exceptions, the Bedouin married but one wife; and the chastity of women was protected by sanguinary laws, the guilty woman having her head out off by her own relations, while her paramour, unless caught in the act, is allowed to escape; the Arabs proceeding on the ground that the chastity of the woman is a pearl above all price; that it is in her own keeping; and that it is but part of the infirmity of man's nature to seek to rob her of it.

The whole day we were moving between parallel ranges of mountains, receding in some places, and then again contracting, and at about midday entered a narrow and rugged defile, bounded on each side with precipitous granite rocks more than a thousand feet high. We entered at the very bottom of this defile, moving for a time along the dry bed of a torrent, now obstructed with sand and stones, the rocks on every side shivered and torn, and the whole scene wild to sublimity. Our camels stumbled among the rocky fragments to such a degree that we dismounted, and passed through the wild defile on foot. At the other end we came suddenly upon a plain table of ground, and before us towered in awful grandeur, so huge and dark that it seemed close to us and barring all farther progress, the end of my pilgrimage, the holy mountain of Sinai. On our left was a large insulated stone, rudely resembling a chair, called the chair of Moses, on which tradition says that Moses rested himself when he came up with the people of his charge; farther on, upon a little eminence, are some rude stones, which are pointed out as the ruins of the house of Aaron, where the great high-priest discoursed to the wandering Israelites. On the right is a stone, alleged to be the petrified golden calf. But it was not necessary to draw upon false and frivolous legends to give interest to this scene; the majesty of nature was enough. I felt that I was on holy ground; and, dismounting from my dromedary, loitered for more than an hour in the valley. It was cold, and I sent my shivering Bedouins forward, supposing myself to be at the foot of the mountain, and lingered there until after the sun had set. It was after dark as alone, and on foot, I entered the last defile leading to the holy mountain. The moon had risen, but her light could not penetrate the deep defile through which I was toiling slowly on to the foot of Sinai. From about half way up it shone with a pale and solemn lustre, while below all was in the deepest shade, and a dark spot on the side of the mountain, seeming perfectly black in contrast with the light above it, marked the situation of the convent. I passed a Bedouin tent, under which a group of Arabs were sleeping around a large fire, and in a few moments stood at the foot of the convent wall. My camels were lying down eating their evening meal, and my Bedouins were asleep on the ground close under the walls.

Knowing that they would not be admitted themselves, they had not demanded entrance; and as I had not told them to do so, they had not given notice of my coming. The convent was a very large building, and the high stone walls surrounding it, with turrets at the corners, gave it the appearance of a fortress. Exposed as they are to occasional attacks by the Bedouins, the holy fathers are sometimes obliged to have recourse to carnal weapons. The walls are accordingly mounted with cannon, and there is no entrance except by a subterraneous passage under the garden, or by a small door in one of the walls, about thirty feet from the ground. My Bedouins had stopped under this door, and here we commenced shouting for admission, first singly, and then a1together, in French, English, and Arabic but no one came to admit us. I was strongly reminded of the scene under the walls of the little convent in the desert, on my attempted expedition to the great Oasis. Then, as now, it was a moonlight night, and the scene was a convent, a lonely habitation of Christians, with its door closed against a fellow-Christian. I remember that then I had to force my way in and make my own welcome, and I resolved that no trifle should keep me from an entrance here. The convent belonged to the Greek church. I did not know how many monks were in it, or what was the sanctity of their lives, but I wished that some of them had slept with more troubled consciences, for we made almost noise enough to wake the dead; and it was not until we had discharged two volleys of firearms that we succeeded in rousing any of the slumbering inmates. On one side were two or three little slits or portholes, and a monk, with a long white beard and a lighted taper in his hand, cautiously thrust out his bead at one of them, and demanded our business. This was soon told; we were strangers and Christians, and wanted admission; and had a letter from the Greek patriarch at Cairo. The head disappeared from the loophole, and soon after I saw its owner slowly open the little door, and let down a rope for the patriarch's letter. He read it by the feeble glimmer of his lamp, and then again appeared at the window, and bade its welcome. The rope was again let down; I tied it around my arms; and after dangling in the air for a brief space, swinging to and fro against the walls, found myself clasped in the arms of a burly, long-bearded monk, who hauled me in, kissed me on both cheeks, our long beards rubbing together in friendly union, and, untwisting the rope, set me upon my feet, and passed me over to his associates.

By this time nearly all the monks had assembled, and all pressed forward to welcome me. They shook my hand, took me in their arms, and kissed my face; and if I had been their dearest friend just escaped from the jaws of death, they could not have received me with a more cordial greeting. Glad as I was, after a ten days' journey, to be received with such warmth by these recluses of the mountains, I could have spared the kissing. The custom is one of the detestable things of the East. It would not be so bad if it were universal, and the traveller might sometimes receive his welcome from rosy lips; but, unhappily, the women hide their faces and run away from a stranger, while the men rub him with their bristly beards. At first I went at it with a stout heart, flattering myself that I could give as well as take; but I soon flinched and gave up. Their beards were the growth of years, while mine had only a few months to boast of, and its downward aspirations must continue many a long day before it would attain the respectable longitude of theirs.

During the kissing scene, a Bedouin servant came from the other end of the terrace with an armful of burning brush, and threw it in a blaze upon the stony floor. The monks were gathered around, talking to me and uttering assurances of welcome, as I knew them to be, although I could not understand them; and, confused and almost stunned with their clamorous greeting, I threw myself on the floor, thrust my feet in the fire, and called out for Paul. Twice the rope descended and brought up my tent, baggage, &c.; and the third time it brought up Paul, hung round with guns, pistols, and swords, like a travelling battery. The rope was wound up by a windlass, half a dozen monks, in long black frocks with white stripes, turning it with all their might. In the general eagerness to help, they kept on turning until they had carried Paul above the window, and brought his neck up short under the beam, his feet struggling to hold on to the sill of the door. He roared out lustily in Greek and Arabic; and while they were helping to disencumber him of his multifarious armour, he was cursing and berating them for a set of blundering workmen, who had almost broken the neck of as good a Christian as any them. Probably, since the last incursion of the Bedouins, the peaceful walls of the convent had not been disturbed by such an infernal clatter.

The monks had been roused from sleep, and some of them were hardly yet awake; the superior was the last who came, and his presence quickly restored order. He was a remarkably noble-looking old man, of more than sixty. He asked me my country, and called me his child, and told me that God would reward me for coming from so distant a land to do homage on the holy mountain; and I did not deny the character he ascribed to me, or correct his mistake in supposing, that the motive of my journey was purely religious; and, looking upon me as a devout pilgrim, he led me through a long range of winding passages, which seemed like the streets of a city, into a small room spread with mats, having a pile of coverlets in one corner, and wearing an appearance of comfort that could be fully appreciated by one who had then spent ten nights in the desert. I threw myself on the mats with a feeling of gratitude, while the superior renewed his welcome, telling me that the convent was the pilgrim's home, and that everything it contained was mine for a week, a month, or the rest of my days. Nor did he neglect my immediate wants, but, with all the warmth and earnestness of a man who could feel for others' woes in so important a matter as eating, expressed his regret that meat was always a forbidden thing within the walls of the convent, and that now, during their forty days of fasting, even fish and eggs were proscribed. I told him, that I was an invalid, and wanted only the plainest and simplest viands, but insinuated that speed was of more importance than richness of fare, having eaten only a biscuit and an orange since morning. The cook of the convent, however, a lay brother in his novitiate, was not used to do things in a hurry, and before he was ready I felt myself goaded by the fiend of famine; and when he came with a platter of beans and a smoking pilau of rice, I made such all attack upon them as made the good superior stare with wonder and admiration and I have no doubt that, before I had done, he must have thought a few more such invalids would bring him and the whole brotherhood to actual starvation.

The superior was a Greek by birth, and though it was forty years since he had first come to the convent at Sinai, and twenty years since he entered it for the last time, be was still a Greek in heart. His relations with his native land were kept up by the occasional visits of pilgrims. He had heard of their bloody struggle for liberty, and of what America had done for her in her hour of need, and he told me that, next to his own country, he loved mine; and by his kindness to me as an individual, he sought to repay, in part, his country's debt of gratitude. In my wanderings through Greece, I had invariably found the warmest feelings towards my country. I had found it in the offices of government, in my boatmen, my muleteer, and I remember a ploughman on immortal Marathon sang in my greedy ears the praise of America. I had seen the tear stream down the manly cheeks of a mustached Greek when he talked of America. I had seen those who had received directly from the hands of my countrymen the bounty that came from home. One, I remember, pointed me to a family of sons and daughters who, he told me, were saved from absolute starvation by our timely help; and so dearly was our country loved there, that I verily believe the mountain robber would have spared the unprotected American.

I knew that this feeling existed in Greece, but I did not expect to find it thus glowing in the wilderness of Sinai. For myself, different in this respect from most other travellers, I liked the Greeks. Travellers and strangers condemn the whole people as dishonest, because they are cheated by their boatmen or muleteers, without ever thinking Of their four centuries of bitter servitude; but when I remembered their long oppression and galling chains, instead of wondering that they were so bad, I wondered that they were not worse. I liked the Greeks; and when I talked of Greece and what I had seen there, of the Bavarians lording it over the descendants of Cimon and Miltiades, the face of the superior flushed and his eyes flashed fire, and when I spoke of the deep interest their sufferings and their glorious struggle had created in America, the old man wept. Oh, who can measure the feeling that binds a man to his native land! Though forty years an exile, buried in the wilderness, and neither expecting nor wishing to revisit the world, he loved his country as if his foot now pressed her soil, and under his monkish robe there glowed a heart as patriotic as ever beat beneath a soldier's corslet. The reader will excuse an unusual touch of sensibility in me when he reflects upon my singular position, sitting at the base of Mount Sinai, and hearing from the lips of a white-bearded Greek the praises of my beloved country. He sat with me till the ringing of the midnight bell for prayers, when I threw myself upon the mat, and, before the hollow sounds had died away in the cloisters. I was fast asleep.