HOSPITALITY OF THE ARABS

15

might drive a man to the desert, and, after having fallen into the indolent and mere animal habits of savage life, he might find it difficult to return to the wholesome restraints and duties of society; but I am satisfied that it is sheer affectation or ignorance, in which a member of the civilized family sighs, or pretends to sigh, for the imagined delights of an untried freedom. For my own part, I had long been satisfied of this truth, and did not need the cumulative evidence of my visit to the Bedouin's tent. He would have had me sleep under its shelter; but I knew that in all the Bedouin tents there were multitudes of enemies to rest; creatures that murder sleep; and I preferred the solitude of my own.

One word as to the hospitality of the Arabs. I had read beautiful descriptions of its manifestation, and in some way or other had gathered up the notion that the Bedouin would be offended by an offer to reward his hospitality with a price; but, feeling naturally anxious not to make a blunder on either side of a question so delicate, I applied to my guide Toualeb for information on the subject. His answer was brief and explicit. He said there was no obligation to give or pay, it being the custom of the Bedouins (among friendly tribes) to ask the wayfaring man into his tent, give him food and shelter, and send him on his way in the morning; that I could give or not, as I pleased; but that, if I did not, the hospitable host would wish his lamb alive again; and from the exceeding satisfaction with which that estimable

person received my parting gift, I am very sure that in this instance, at least, I did better in taking Toualeb's knowledge of his people for my guide than I should have done by acting upon what I had read in books. It may be that, if I had gone among them poor and friendless, I should have been received in the same manner, and nothing would have been expected or received from me; but I am inclined to think, from what I saw afterward, that in such case the

lamb would have been spared for a longer term of existence, and the hospitality confined to a dip into the dish and a mat at the door of the tent.

Early in the morning we left the tent of our Bedouin landlord. We were still among mountains; at every moment a new view presented itself, wild, fanciful, and picturesque; and in the distance was still visible the long range of dark mountains bordering the Red Sea. Our course was now directly for this sea, but the mountain range ap peared so contiguous and unbroken that there seemed no way of getting to it but by crossing their rugged summits. There was a way, however; an opening which we could not distinguish at so great a distance, and for some time Toualeb was at a loss. He was so purblind that he could scarcely distinguish me from one of his dark companions, yet he could read the firmament like a book, and mark the proportion of the almost shapeless mountains; but he was uncertain how to hit precisely the opening by which we must pass through. There was no danger of our losing ourselves, and the only hazard was that of wasting a day in the search; but, fortunately, at the commencement of our perplexity, we came upon a Bedouin whose tert was at the foot of the mountain; and, under his instructions, we pushed on with confidence and ultimate success.

WILDERNESS OF SINAI.

17

CHAPTER II.

Evening Amusements.-A Trial of the Feelings.-A Disappointment.-A Santon of the Desert.-An Arab Fisherman.-Turkish Costume -A potent Official.-A Comfortless Sick-room.-A Visit from the Sheik.-Interested Friendship.—Akaba.—The El Alouins.-Questionable Piety.

IT was late in the afternoon when our little caravan entered the narrow opening, presenting itself like a natural door between precipitous rocks several hundred feet in height. Passing this, and continuing onward to a vast amphitheatre, or hollow square of lofty rocks, through a larger opening on our left, we again saw the dark waters of the Red Sea. About midway across I dismounted from my dromedary to survey the scene around me; and, among the many of high interest presented to the traveller in the wilderness of Sinai, I remember none more striking and impressive. It was neither so dreary and desolate, nor so wild and terrible as others I had seen, but different from all. The door by which we entered was undistinguishable, the rocks in the background completely closing it to the sight; on all sides except towards the sea, and forming almost a perfect square, were the naked faces of the rock, lofty, smooth, and regular, like the excavated sides of an ancient quarry, and quiet to that extraordinary and indescribable degree of which I have already spoken. Descending towards the opening that led to the sea, directly under us was an extensive and sandy plain, reaching to its very margin; and nearly opposite, rising abruptly from the clear waters, a long unbroken range of stern and rugged mountains, their dark irregular outline finely contrasted with the level sur

face at their feet, while the sea itself extended on the right and left as far as the eye could reach in that clear atmosphere; but the first stage of my journey, the head of the gulf, and the little fortress of Akaba, were still invisible.

We rode about an hour along the shore, passing at a distance the tents of some Bedouins; and, about an hour before dark, encamped in a grove of wild palm-trees, so near the sea that the waves almost reached the door of my tent. When the moon rose I walked for an hour along the shore, and, musing upon the new scenes which every day was presenting me, picked up some shells and bits of coral as memorials of the place. I am no star-gazer, but I had learned to look up at the stars; and though I knew most of them merely by sight, I felt an attraction towards them as faces I had seen at home; while the Great Bear with his pointers, and the North Star, seemed my particular friends. Returning to my tent, I found my Bedouins, with some strangers from the tents which we had passed, sitting round a fire of the branches of palm-trees, smoking, and telling stories as extravagant as any in the Arabian Nights' Entertainments. I sat down with them a few moments, then entered my tent and lay down on my mat on the very shore of the sea, and was lulled to sleep by the gentle murmur of its waters.

In the morning Paul told me that there was a strange Arab outside, who wanted to see me. When we first came down from the mountain on the preceding day, a Bedouin had come out and requested me to turn aside and visit a sick man in his tent. In their perfect ignorance of the healing art, the Arabs believe every stranger to be a hakim; and so great is their confidence in the virtue of medicine, and so great their indifference to the hands from which they receive it, that the path of the traveller is constantly beset with applications from the sick or their friends. I had been so often besought and entreated to cure blindness, deafness,

A TRIAL OF THE FEELINGS.

19

and other maladies beyond even the reach of medical skill, that now I paid little attention to such applications; and when this last request was made, after inquiring into the symptoms of the case, I told the messenger that I could do the sick man no good, and passed on. This morning Paul told me that the patient himself had come over during the night, and was then at the door, begging me to cure him. Paul had told him of my utter inability, but he would not be satisfied; and when I went out of my tent he was sitting directly before the door, a thin, ghastly figure; and opening his mouth and attempting an inarticulate jabber, there fell out a tongue so festered to the very throat, that the sight of it made me sick. I told him that it was utterly out of my. power to help him; that I knew no more of the healing art than he did himself; and that the only advice I could give him was to endeavour to get to Cairo and put himself under the hands of a physician. I shall never forget the poor fellow's look, and almost blamed myself for not giving him. some simple preparation, which might have cheated him, at least for a few days, with the hope that he might escape the tomb to which he was hurrying. His hands fell lifeless by his side, as if he had heard a sentence of death; he gave me a look which seemed to say that it was all my fault, and fell senseless on the ground. His two companions lifted him up; his faithful dromedary kneeled to receive him; and, as he turned away, he cast a reproachful glance towards me, which made me almost imagine myself guilty of his death. I have no doubt that, long before this, the poor Arab is dead, and that in his dying moments, when struggling with the king of terrors, he has seen, in his distracted visions, the figure of the hard-hearted stranger, who, as he thought, might have saved him, but would not.

Anxious to escape an object so painful to my feelings, I walked on, and was soon busily engaged in picking up shells and coral; of the former I never saw so many as at this