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.
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