No Robbers Came Except A Jackal, That
Poked His Nose Into My Tent From Some Motive Of Rational Curiosity.
Dthemetri Did Not Shoot Him For Fear Of Waking Me.
These brutes
swarm in every part of Syria, and there were many of them even in
the midst of the void sands, that would seem to give such poor
promise of food.
I can hardly tell what prey they could be hoping
for, unless it were that they might find now and then the carcass
of some camel that had died on the journey. They do not marshal
themselves into great packs like the wild dogs of Eastern cities,
but follow their prey in families, like the place-hunters of
Europe. Their voices are frightfully like to the shouts and cries
of human beings. If you lie awake in your tent at night you are
almost continually hearing some hungry family as it sweeps along in
full cry. You hear the exulting scream with which the sagacious
dam first winds the carrion, and the shrill response of the
unanimous cubs as they sniff the tainted air, "Wha! wha! wha! wha!
wha! wha! Whose gift is it in, mamma?"
Once during this passage my Arabs lost their way among the hills of
loose sand that surrounded us, but after a while we were lucky
enough to recover our right line of march. The same day we fell in
with a Sheik, the head of a family, that actually dwells at no
great distance from this part of the Desert during nine months of
the year.
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