4. Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823-1911) was an

American writer of essays and biography.

IN THE DESERT

BY A. W. KINGLAKE

The following sketch vividly describes an English traveler's impression of the desert country that lies between Jerusalem and Cairo. Mr. Kinglake had only an interpreter, two Arabian attendants and two camels in his little caravan.

Eothen, the title of the volume from which this selection is extracted, is a Greek word meaning "From the East."

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 5 from this part of the desert during nine months of the year. The man carried a matchlock, and of this he was inordinately proud, on account of the supposed novelty and ingenuity of the contrivance. We stopped, and sat down and rested awhile, for the sake of a little talk. 10

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 tedious. I discovered, however (and my Arabs knew of that fact), that this man 15 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, and this furnishes the sole food and drink of 20 their owner and his people. During the other three months (the hottest, 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 5 enough of Arab politics to answer the question.

The sheik was not a good specimen of the effect produced by his way of living. He was very small, very spare, and sadly shriveled—a poor overroasted snipe—a mere cinder of a man. I made him sit down by my side, and 10 gave him a piece of bread and a cup of water from out of my goatskins. This was not a very tempting drink to look at, for it had become turbid and was deeply reddened by some coloring matter contained in the skins; but it kept its sweetness and tasted like a strong decoction of 15 Russia leather. The sheik sipped this drop by drop with ineffable relish, and rolled his eyes solemnly round after every draft 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 20 sheik had never heard of the division of time into hours.

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 stretching far and fair towards the south—stretching deep into winding creeks and hemmed in by 25 jutting promontories, and shelving smooth off toward the shallow side. On its bosom the reflected fire of the sun lay playing and seeming to float as though upon deep, still waters.

Though I knew of the cheat, it was not till the spongy 30 foot of my camel had almost trodden in the seeming lake 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 gathered together in a vast hollow between the sand hills, and when dried up by evaporation had left a white saline deposit; this exactly marked the space which the waters 5 had covered, and so traced out a good shore line. The minute crystals of the salt, by their way of sparkling in the sun, were made to seem like the dazzled face of a lake that is calm and smooth.

The pace of the camel is irksome, and makes your 10 shoulders and loins ache from the peculiar way in which you are obliged to suit yourself to the movements of the beast; but one soon, of course, becomes inured to the work, and after my first two days, this way of traveling became so familiar to me that (poor sleeper as I am) I now and then 15 slumbered for some moments together on the back of my camel.

After the fifth day of my journey, I no longer traveled over the shifting hills but came upon a dead level—a dead level bed of sand, quite hard, and studded with small shining 20 pebbles.

The heat grew fierce; there was no valley, no hollow, no hill, no mound, no shadow of hill nor of mound, by which I could mark the way I was making. Hour by hour I advanced, and saw no change. I was still the very center 25 of a round horizon. Hour by hour I advanced, and still there was the same, and the same, and the same—the same circle of flaming sky—the same circle of sand still glaring with light and fire. Over all the heaven above, over all the earth beneath, there was no visible power that 30 could balk the fierce will of the sun. "He rejoiced as a strong man to run a race; his going forth was from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it: and there was nothing hid from the heat thereof." From pole to pole, and from the east to the west, he brandished his fiery scepter as though he had usurped all heaven and earth. As he bid the soft Persian in ancient times, so 5 now, and fiercely too, he bid me bow down and worship him; so now in his pride he seemed to command me, and say, "Thou shalt have none other gods but me." I was all alone before him. There were these two pitted together, and face to face—the mighty sun for one, and for 10 the other this poor, pale, solitary Self of mine.

But on the eighth day, and before I had yet turned away from Jehovah for the glittering god of the Persians, there appeared a dark line upon the edge of the forward horizon, and soon the line deepened into a delicate fringe that 15 sparkled here and there as though it were sown with diamonds. There, then, before me were the gardens and the minarets of Egypt, and the mighty works of the Nile, and I, I had lived to see, and I saw them.

When evening came I was still within the confines of the 20 desert, and my tent was pitched as usual; but one of my Arabs stalked away rapidly toward the west without telling me of the errand on which he was bent. After a while he returned. He had toiled on a graceful service; he had traveled all the way on to the border of the living world, 25 and brought me back for a token an ear of rice, full, fresh, and green.

—Eothen.

1. Several aspects of the desert are herein described. The first is a native sheik. What are the others?

2. The camel and the blazing sun belong peculiarly to the desert. What comments has Mr. Kinglake made on each?