You soon learn to pity, and soon to
love, her for the sake of her gentle and womanish ways.
You cannot, of course, put an English or any other riding saddle
upon the back of the camel, but your quilt or carpet, or whatever
you carry for the purpose of lying on at night, is folded and
fastened on to the pack-saddle upon the top of the hump, and on
this you ride, or rather sit. You sit as a man sits on a chair
when he sits astride and faces the back of it. I made an
improvement on this plan. I had my English stirrups strapped on to
the cross-bars of the pack-saddle, and thus by gaining rest for my
dangling legs, and gaining too the power of varying my position
more easily than I could otherwise have done, I added very much to
my comfort. Don't forget to do as I did.
The camel, like the elephant, is one of the old-fashioned sort of
animals that still walk along upon the (now nearly exploded) plan
of the ancient beasts that lived before the Flood. She moves
forward both her near legs at the same time, and then awkwardly
swings round her off shoulder and haunch so as to repeat the
manoeuvre on that side. Her pace, therefore, is an odd, disjointed
and disjoining, sort of movement that is rather disagreeable at
first, but you soon grow reconciled to it. The height to which you
are raised is of great advantage to you in passing the burning
sands of the Desert, for the air at such a distance from the ground
is much cooler and more lively than that which circulates beneath.
For several miles beyond Gaza the land, which had been plentifully
watered by the rains of the last week, was covered with rich
verdure, and thickly jewelled with meadow flowers so fresh and
fragrant, that I began to grow almost uneasy, to fancy that the
very Desert was receding before me, and that the long-desired
adventure of passing its "burning sands" was to end in a mere ride
across a field. But as I advanced the true character of the
country began to display itself with sufficient clearness to dispel
my apprehensions, and before the close of my first day's journey I
had the gratification of finding that I was surrounded on all sides
by a tract of real sand, and had nothing at all to complain of
except that there peeped forth at intervals a few isolated blades
of grass, and many of those stunted shrubs which are the accustomed
food of the camel.
Before sunset I came up with an encampment of Arabs (the encampment
from which my camels had been brought), and my tent was pitched
amongst theirs. I was now amongst the true Bedouins. Almost every
man of this race closely resembles his brethren. Almost every man
has large and finely-formed features; but his face is so thoroughly
stripped of flesh, and the white folds from his headgear fall down
by his haggard cheeks so much in the burial fashion, that he looks
quite sad and ghastly. His large dark orbs roll slowly and
solemnly over the white of his deep-set eyes; his countenance shows
painful thought and long-suffering, the suffering of one fallen
from a high estate. His gait is strangely majestic, and he marches
along with his simple blanket as though he were wearing the purple.
His common talk is a series of piercing screams and cries, {29}
more painful to the ear than the most excruciating fine music that
I ever endured.
The Bedouin women are not treasured up like the wives and daughters
of other Orientals, and indeed they seemed almost entirely free
from the restraints imposed by jealousy. The feint which they made
of concealing their faces from me was always slight. They never, I
think, wore the yashmak properly fixed. When they first saw me
they used to hold up a part of their drapery with one hand across
their faces, but they seldom persevered very steadily in subjecting
me to this privation. Unhappy beings! they were sadly plain. The
awful haggardness that gave something of character to the faces of
the men was sheer ugliness in the poor women. It is a great shame,
but the truth is that, except when we refer to the beautiful
devotion of the mother to her child, all the fine things we say and
think about woman apply only to those who are tolerably good-
looking or graceful. These Arab women were so plain and clumsy,
that they seemed to me to be fit for nothing but another and a
better world. They may have been good women enough so far as
relates to the exercise of the minor virtues, but they had so
grossly neglected the prime duty of looking pretty in this
transitory life, that I could not at all forgive them. They seemed
to feel the weight of their guilt, and to be truly and humbly
penitent. I had the complete command of their affections, for at
any moment I could make their young hearts bound and their old
hearts jump by offering a handful of tobacco, and yet, believe me,
it was not in the first soiree that my store of Latakia was
exhausted.
The Bedouin women have no religion. This is partly the cause of
their clumsiness. Perhaps if from Christian girls they would learn
how to pray, their souls might become more gentle, and their limbs
be clothed with grace. You who are going into their country have a
direct personal interest in knowing something about "Arab
hospitality"; but the deuce of it is, that the poor fellows with
whom I have happened to pitch my tent were scarcely ever in a
condition to exercise that magnanimous virtue with much eclat.
Indeed, Mysseri's canteen generally enabled me to outdo my hosts in
the matter of entertainment.
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