If You Force Your Beast
Forward For A Moment, He Will Contrive To Wheel And Draw Back, At
The Same Time Looking At One Of The Other Camels With An Expression
And Gesture Exactly Equivalent To Apres Vous.
The responsibility
of finding the way is evidently assumed very unwillingly.
After
some time, however, it becomes understood that one of the beasts
has reluctantly consented to take the lead, and he accordingly
advances for that purpose. 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.
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