If It Happens That No One
Of The Camels Has Been Accustomed To Lead The Others, There Is Very
Great Difficulty In Making A Start.
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.
The want of foresight is an anomalous part of the Bedouin's
character, for it does not result either from recklessness or
stupidity. I know of no human being whose body is so thoroughly
the slave of mind as that of the Arab. His mental anxieties seem
to be for ever torturing every nerve and fibre of his body, and yet
with all this exquisite sensitiveness to the suggestions of the
mind, he is grossly improvident. I recollect, for instance, that
when setting out upon this passage of the Desert my Arabs, in order
to lighten the burthen of their camels, were most anxious that we
should take with us only two days' supply of water. They said that
by the time that supply was exhausted we should arrive at a spring
which would furnish us for the rest of the journey. My servants
very wisely, and with much pertinacity, resisted the adoption of
this plan, and took care to have both the large skins well filled.
We proceeded and found no water at all, either at the expected
spring or for many days afterwards, so that nothing but the
precaution of my own people saved us from the very severe suffering
which we should have endured if we had entered upon the Desert with
only a two days' supply. The Arabs themselves being on foot would
have suffered much more than I from the consequences of their
improvidence.
This unaccountable want of foresight prevents the Bedouin from
appreciating at a distance of eight or ten days the amount of the
misery which he entails upon himself at the end of that period.
His dread of a city is one of the most painful mental affections
that I have ever observed, and yet when the whole breadth of the
Desert lies between him and the town to which you are going, he
will freely enter into an agreement to LAND you in the city for
which you are bound. When, however, after many a day of toil the
distant minarets at length appear, the poor Bedouin relaxes the
vigour of his pace, his steps become faltering and undecided, every
moment his uneasiness increases, and at length he fairly sobs
aloud, and embracing your knees, implores with the most piteous
cries and gestures that you will dispense with him and his camels,
and find some other means of entering the city. This, of course,
one can't agree to, and the consequence is that one is obliged to
witness and resist the most moving expressions of grief and fond
entreaty. I had to go through a most painful scene of this kind
when I entered Cairo, and now the horror which these wilder Arabs
felt at the notion of entering Gaza led to consequences still more
distressing. The dread of cities results partly from a kind of
wild instinct which has always characterised the descendants of
Ishmael, but partly too from a well-founded apprehension of ill-
treatment. So often it happens that the poor Bedouin, when once
jammed in between walls, is seized by the Government authorities
for the sake of his camels, that his innate horror of cities
becomes really justified by results.
The Bedouins with whom I performed this journey were wild fellows
of the Desert, quite unaccustomed to let out themselves or their
beasts for hire, and when they found that by the natural ascendency
of Europeans they were gradually brought down to a state of
subserviency to me, or rather to my attendants, they bitterly
repented, I believe, of having placed themselves under our control.
They were rather difficult fellows to manage, and gave Dthemetri a
good deal of trouble, but I liked them all the better for that.
Selim, the chief of the party, and the man to whom all our camels
belonged, was a fine, savage, stately fellow. There were, I think,
five other Arabs of the party, but when we approached the end of
the journey they one by one began to make off towards the
neighbouring encampments, and by the time that the minarets of Gaza
were in sight, Selim, the owner of the camels, was the only one who
remained. He, poor fellow, as we neared the town began to discover
the same terrors that my Arabs had shown when I entered Cairo. I
could not possibly accede to his entreaties and consent to let my
baggage be laid down on the bare sands, without any means of having
it brought on into the city.
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