And The
Ground Too Was Perfectly Hard (Compacted Sand), But The Thickly
Wadded Headgear Which I Wore For Protection Against The Sun Saved
My Life.
The notion of my being able to get up again after falling
head-foremost from such an immense height seemed to me at first too
paradoxical to be acted upon, but I soon found that I was not a bit
hurt.
My dromedary utterly vanished. I looked round me, and saw
the glimmer of a light in the fort which I had lately passed, and I
began to work my way back in that direction. The violence of the
gale made it hard for me to force my way towards the west, but I
succeeded at last in regaining the fort. To this, as to the other
fort which I had passed, there was attached a cluster of huts, and
I soon found myself surrounded by a group of villainous, gloomy-
looking fellows. It was a horrid bore for me to have to swagger
and look big at a time when I felt so particularly small on account
of my tumble and my lost dromedary; but there was no help for it; I
had no Dthemetri now to "strike terror" for me. I knew hardly one
word of Arabic, but somehow or other I contrived to announce it as
my absolute will and pleasure that these fellows should find me the
means of gaining Suez. They acceded, and having a donkey, they
saddled it for me, and appointed one of their number to attend me
on foot.
I afterwards found that these fellows were not Arabs, but Algerine
refugees, and that they bore the character of being sad scoundrels.
They justified this imputation to some extent on the following day.
They allowed Mysseri with my baggage and the camels to pass
unmolested, but an Arab lad belonging to the party happened to lag
a little way in the rear, and him (if they were not maligned) these
rascals stripped and robbed. Low indeed is the state of bandit
morality when men will allow the sleek traveller with well-laden
camels to pass in quiet, reserving their spirit of enterprise for
the tattered turban of a miserable boy.
I reached Suez at last. The British agent, though roused from his
midnight sleep, received me in his home with the utmost kindness
and hospitality. Oh! by Jove, how delightful it was to lie on fair
sheets, and to dally with sleep, and to wake, and to sleep, and to
wake once more, for the sake of sleeping again!
CHAPTER XXII - SUEZ
I was hospitably entertained by the British consul, or agent, as he
is there styled. He is the employe of the East India Company, and
not of the Home Government. Napoleon during his stay of five days
at Suez had been the guest of the consul's father, and I was told
that the divan in my apartment had been the bed of the great
commander.
There are two opinions as to the point at which the Israelites
passed the Red Sea. One is, that they traversed only the very
small creek at the northern extremity of the inlet, and that they
entered the bed of the water at the spot on which Suez now stands;
the other, that they crossed the sea from a point eighteen miles
down the coast. The Oxford theologians, who, with Milman their
professor, {38} believe that Jehovah conducted His chosen people
without disturbing the order of nature, adopt the first view, and
suppose that the Israelites passed during an ebb-tide, aided by a
violent wind. One among many objections to this supposition is,
that the time of a single ebb would not have been sufficient for
the passage of that vast multitude of men and beasts, or even for a
small fraction of it. Moreover, the creek to the north of this
point can be compassed in an hour, and in two hours you can make
the circuit of the salt marsh over which the sea may have extended
in former times. If, therefore, the Israelites crossed so high up
as Suez, the Egyptians, unless infatuated by Divine interference,
might easily have recovered their stolen goods from the encumbered
fugitives by making a slight detour. The opinion which fixes the
point of passage at eighteen miles' distance, and from thence right
across the ocean depths to the eastern side of the sea, is
supported by the unanimous tradition of the people, whether
Christians or Mussulmans, and is consistent with Holy Writ: "the
waters were a wall unto them on their right hand, AND ON THEIR
LEFT." The Cambridge mathematicians seem to think that the
Israelites were enabled to pass over dry land by adopting a route
not usually subjected to the influx of the sea. This notion is
plausible in a merely hydrostatical point of view, and is supposed
to have been adopted by most of the Fellows of Trinity, but
certainly not by Thorp, who is one of the most amiable of their
number. It is difficult to reconcile this theory with the account
given in Exodus, unless we can suppose that the words "sea" and
"waters" are there used in a sense implying dry land.
Napoleon when at Suez made an attempt to follow the supposed steps
of Moses by passing the creek at this point, but it seems,
according to the testimony of the people at Suez, that he and his
horsemen managed the matter in a way more resembling the failure of
the Egyptians than the success of the Israelites. According to the
French account, Napoleon got out of the difficulty by that warrior-
like presence of mind which served him so well when the fate of
nations depended on the decision of a moment - he ordered his
horsemen to disperse in all directions, in order to multiply the
chances of finding shallow water, and was thus enabled to discover
a line by which he and his people were extricated.
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