The Night After The Meeting With The People Of The Caravan,
Dthemetri, Alarmed By Their Warnings, Took Upon Himself To Keep
Watch All Night In The Tent.
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. The man carried a matchlock, of which he was very proud.
We stopped and sat down and rested awhile for the sake of a little
talk. There was much that I should have liked to ask this man, but
he could not understand Dthemetri's language, and the process of
getting at his knowledge by double interpretation through my Arabs
was unsatisfactory. I discovered, however (and my Arabs knew of
that fact), that this man and his family lived habitually for nine
months of the year without touching or seeing either bread or
water. The stunted shrub growing at intervals through the sand in
this part of the Desert enables the camel mares to yield a little
milk, which furnishes the sole food and drink of their owner and
his people. During the other three months (the hottest of the
months, I suppose) even this resource fails, and then the Sheik and
his people are forced to pass into another district. You would ask
me why the man should not remain always in that district which
supplies him with water during three months of the year, but I
don't know enough of Arab politics to answer the question. The
Sheik was not a good specimen of the effect produced by the diet to
which he is subjected. He was very small, very spare, and sadly
shrivelled, a poor, over-roasted snipe, a mere cinder of a man. I
made him sit down by my side, and gave him a piece of bread and a
cup of water from out of my goat-skins. This was not very tempting
drink to look at, for it had become turbid, and was deeply reddened
by some colouring matter contained in the skins, but it kept its
sweetness, and tasted like a strong decoction of russia leather.
The Sheik sipped this, drop by drop, with ineffable relish, and
rolled his eyes solemnly round between every draught, as though the
drink were the drink of the Prophet, and had come from the seventh
heaven.
An inquiry about distances led to the discovery that this Sheik had
never heard of the division of time into hours; my Arabs
themselves, I think, were rather surprised at this.
About this part of my journey I saw the likeness of a fresh-water
lake. I saw, as it seemed, a broad sheet of calm water, that
stretched far and fair towards the south, stretching deep into
winding creeks, and hemmed in by jutting promontories, and shelving
smooth off towards the shallow side. On its bosom the reflected
fire of the sun lay playing, and seeming to float upon waters deep
and still.
Though I knew of the cheat, it was not till the spongy foot of my
camel had almost trodden in the seeming waters that I could
undeceive my eyes, for the shore-line was quite true and natural.
I soon saw the cause of the phantasm. A sheet of water heavily
impregnated with salts had filled this great hollow, and when dried
up by evaporation had left a white saline deposit, that exactly
marked the space which the waters had covered, and thus sketched a
good shore-line. The minute crystals of the salt sparkled in the
sun, and so looked like the face of a lake that is calm and smooth.
The pace of the camel is irksome, and makes your shoulders and
loins ache from the peculiar way in which you are obliged to suit
yourself to the movements of the beast, but you soon of course
become inured to this, and after the first two days this way of
travelling became so familiar to me, that (poor sleeper as I am) I
now and then slumbered for some moments together on the back of my
camel. On the fifth day of my journey the air above lay dead, and
all the whole earth that I could reach with my utmost sight and
keenest listening was still and lifeless as some dispeopled and
forgotten world that rolls round and round in the heavens through
wasted floods of light. The sun growing fiercer and fiercer shone
down more mightily now than ever on me he shone before, and as I
dropped my head under his fire, and closed my eyes against the
glare that surrounded me, I slowly fell asleep, for how many
minutes or moments I cannot tell, but after a while I was gently
awakened by a peal of church bells, my native bells, the innocent
bells of Marlen, that never before sent forth their music beyond
the Blaygon hills!
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