For A Minute Or Two He Goes On With
Much Indecision, Taking First One Line And Then Another, But Soon
By The Aid Of Some Mysterious Sense He Discovers The True
Direction, And Follows It Steadily From Morning To Night.
When
once the leadership is established, you cannot by any persuasion,
and can scarcely by any force, induce a junior camel to walk one
single step in advance of the chosen guide.
On the fifth day I came to an oasis, called the Wady el Arish, a
ravine, or rather a gully, through which during a part of the year
there runs a stream of water. On the sides of the gully there were
a number of those graceful trees which the Arabs call tarfa. The
channel of the stream was quite dry in the part at which we
arrived, but at about half a mile off some water was found, which,
though very muddy, was tolerably sweet. This was a happy
discovery, for all the water that we had brought from the
neighbourhood of Suez was rapidly putrefying.
The want of foresight is an anomalous part of the Bedouin's
character, for it does not result either from recklessness or
stupidity. I know of no human being whose body is so thoroughly
the slave of mind as that of the Arab. His mental anxieties seem
to be for ever torturing every nerve and fibre of his body, and yet
with all this exquisite sensitiveness to the suggestions of the
mind, he is grossly improvident. I recollect, for instance, that
when setting out upon this passage of the Desert my Arabs, in order
to lighten the burthen of their camels, were most anxious that we
should take with us only two days' supply of water. They said that
by the time that supply was exhausted we should arrive at a spring
which would furnish us for the rest of the journey. My servants
very wisely, and with much pertinacity, resisted the adoption of
this plan, and took care to have both the large skins well filled.
We proceeded and found no water at all, either at the expected
spring or for many days afterwards, so that nothing but the
precaution of my own people saved us from the very severe suffering
which we should have endured if we had entered upon the Desert with
only a two days' supply. The Arabs themselves being on foot would
have suffered much more than I from the consequences of their
improvidence.
This unaccountable want of foresight prevents the Bedouin from
appreciating at a distance of eight or ten days the amount of the
misery which he entails upon himself at the end of that period.
His dread of a city is one of the most painful mental affections
that I have ever observed, and yet when the whole breadth of the
Desert lies between him and the town to which you are going, he
will freely enter into an agreement to LAND you in the city for
which you are bound.
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