This Proved To Be An Old
Boiler, Formerly Belonging To A Steam-Vessel, And Appearing, Indeed,
As If Some Black And Shapeless Hulk Had Been Cast On Shore.
The well,
which had attracted my donkeys, was very picturesque; the water flowed
into a large stone trough, or rather basin, beneath the walls of a
castellated edifice, pierced with many small windows, and apparently
in a very dilapidated state.
Those melancholy memento moris, which
had tracked our whole progress through the desert, were to be seen
in the immediate vicinity of this well. The skeletons of five or six
camels lay in a group within a few yards of the haven which they had
doubtless toiled anxiously, though so vainly, to reach. I never could
look upon the bones of these poor animals without a painful feeling,
and in the hope that European skill and science may yet bring forward
those hidden waters which would disarm the desert of its terrors.
It is said that the experiment of boring has been tried, and failed,
between Suez and Cairo, but that it succeeded in the great desert;
some other method, perhaps, may be found, if the project of bringing
water from the hills, by means of aqueducts, should be too expensive.
We heard this plan talked of at the bungalow, but I fear that, in the
present state of Egypt, it is very chimerical.
This was now our fourth day upon the desert, and we had not sustained
the smallest inconvenience; the heat, even at noon, being very
bearable, and the sand not in the least degree troublesome.
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