The Theory Is, That The English
Traveller Has Committed Some Sin Against God And His Conscience,
And That For This
The evil spirit has hold of him, and drives him
from his home like a victim of the old Grecian
Furies, and forces
him to travel over countries far and strange, and most chiefly over
deserts and desolate places, and to stand upon the sites of cities
that once were and are now no more, and to grope among the tombs of
dead men. Often enough there is something of truth in this notion;
often enough the wandering Englishman is guilty (if guilt it be) of
some pride or ambition, big or small, imperial or parochial, which
being offended has made the lone place more tolerable than
ballrooms to him, a sinner.
I can understand the sort of amazement of the Orientals at the
scantiness of the retinue with which an Englishman passes the
Desert, for I was somewhat struck myself when I saw one of my
countrymen making his way across the wilderness in this simple
style. At first there was a mere moving speck on the horizon. My
party of course became all alive with excitement, and there were
many surmises. Soon it appeared that three laden camels were
approaching, and that two of them carried riders. In a little
while we saw that one of the riders wore the European dress, and at
last the travellers were pronounced to be an English gentleman and
his servant. By their side there were a couple, I think, of Arabs
on foot, and this was the whole party.
You, you love sailing; in returning from a cruise to the English
coast you see often enough a fisherman's humble boat far away from
all shores, with an ugly black sky above and an angry sea beneath.
You watch the grizzly old man at the helm carrying his craft with
strange skill through the turmoil of waters, and the boy, supple-
limbed, yet weather-worn already, and with steady eyes that look
through the blast, you see him understanding commandments from the
jerk of his father's white eyebrow, now belaying and now letting
go, now scrunching himself down into mere ballast, or baling out
death with a pipkin. Stale enough is the sight, and yet when I see
it I always stare anew, and with a kind of Titanic exultation,
because that a poor boat with the brain of a man and the hands of a
boy on board can match herself so bravely against black heaven and
ocean. Well, so when you have travelled for days and days over an
Eastern desert without meeting the likeness of a human being, and
then at last see an English shooting-jacket and his servant come
listlessly slouching along from out of the forward horizon, you
stare at the wide unproportion between this slender company and the
boundless plains of sand through which they are keeping their way.
This Englishman, as I afterwards found, was a military man
returning to his country from India, and crossing the Desert at
this part in order to go through Palestine. As for me, I had come
pretty straight from England, and so here we met in the wilderness
at about half-way from our respective starting-points. As we
approached each other it became with me a question whether we
should speak. I thought it likely that the stranger would accost
me, and in the event of his doing so I was quite ready to be as
sociable and chatty as I could be according to my nature; but still
I could not think of anything particular that I had to say to him.
Of course, among civilised people the not having anything to say is
no excuse at all for not speaking, but I was shy and indolent, and
I felt no great wish to stop and talk like a morning visitor in the
midst of those broad solitudes. The traveller perhaps felt as I
did, for except that we lifted our hands to our caps and waved our
arms in courtesy, we passed each other as if we had passed in Bond
Street. Our attendants, however, were not to be cheated of the
delight that they felt in speaking to new listeners and hearing
fresh voices once more. The masters, therefore, had no sooner
passed each other than their respective servants quietly stopped
and entered into conversation. As soon as my camel found that her
companions were not following her she caught the social feeling and
refused to go on. I felt the absurdity of the situation, and
determined to accost the stranger if only to avoid the awkwardness
of remaining stuck fast in the Desert whilst our servants were
amusing themselves. When with this intent I turned round my camel
I found that the gallant officer who had passed me by about thirty
or forty yards was exactly in the same predicament as myself. I
put my now willing camel in motion and rode up towards the
stranger, who seeing this followed my example and came forward to
meet me. He was the first to speak. He was much too courteous to
address me as if he admitted the possibility of my wishing to
accost him from any feeling of mere sociability or civilian-like
love of vain talk. On the contrary, he at once attributed my
advances to a laudable wish of acquiring statistical information,
and accordingly, when we got within speaking distance, he said, "I
dare say you wish to know how the plague is going on at Cairo?"
And then he went on to say, he regretted that his information did
not enable him to give me in numbers a perfectly accurate statement
of the daily deaths. He afterwards talked pleasantly enough upon
other and less ghastly subjects. I thought him manly and
intelligent, a worthy one of the few thousand strong Englishmen to
whom the empire of India is committed.
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