load, and then gently remonstrates against the wrong with the sigh of a patient wife. If sighs will not move you, she can weep. You soon learn to pity and to love her for the sake of her gentle, womanish ways.

5 You cannot, of course, put a riding saddle upon the back of the camel, but your quilt or carpet is folded and fastened on the packsaddle upon the top of the hump, and on this you sit. I had my stirrups strapped to the crossbars of the packsaddle, and thus, by gaining rest for my dan10 gling legs, I added very much to my comfort.

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 15 time, and then awkwardly swings around her off shoulder and haunch, so as to repeat the maneuver 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 20 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 25 plentifully watered by the rains of the last week, was covered with rich verdure, and thickly jeweled 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 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 5 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.

As long as you are journeying in the interior of the 10 desert you have no particular point to make for as your resting place. The endless sands yield nothing but small stunted shrubs. Even these fail after the first two or three days, and from that time you pass over broad plains and newly reared hills, and through valleys that the storm 15 of the last week has dug, and the hills and the valleys are sand, sand, sand, still sand, and only sand, and sand, and sand again.

You look to the sun, for he is your taskmaster, and by him you know the measure of the work that remains for 20 you to do. He comes when you strike your tent in the

early morning, and for the first hour of the day he stands at your side. Then, for a long while, you see him no more, for you are veiled and shrouded and dare not look upon the greatness of his glory, but you know where he strides 25 overhead by the touch of his flaming sword. No words are spoken, but your Arabs moan, your camels sigh, your skin glows, your shoulders ache, and for sights you see the

pattern and the web of the silk that veils your eyes, and the glare of the outer light. But by and by the descending sun has compassed the heaven and now softly touches your right arm and throws your lank shadow over the sand right along on the way for Persia. Then again you 5 look upon his face, for his power is all veiled in his beauty, and the redness of flames has become the redness of roses.

Then arrives your time for resting. The world about you is all your own, and there, where you will, you pitch your solitary tent. There is no living thing to dispute 10 your choice. . . .

After the fifth day of my journey I no longer traveled over shifting hills, but came upon a dead level—a bed of sand, quite hard, and studded with small, shining pebbles. There was no valley nor hollow, no hill, no mound by 15 which I could mark the way I was making. Hour by hour I advanced, and saw no change; I was still the very center of the 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 20 still glaring with light and fire. Over all the heaven above, over all the earth beneath, there was no visible power that could balk the fierce will of the sun.

"He rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race: his going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto 25 the ends of it; and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof."

But on the eighth day there appeared a dark line upon the edge of the forward horizon, and soon the line deepened into a delicate fringe that sparkled here and there as if it were sewn with diamonds. There, then, before me were 5 the gardens and minarets of Egypt, and the mighty works of the Nile.

When evening came I was still within the confines of the desert, and my tent was pitched as usual, but one of my Arabs stalked away rapidly toward the west without 10 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 to the border of the living world, and brought me back for token an ear of rice, full, fresh, and green.

15 The next day I entered upon Egypt and floated along

(for the delight was as the delight of bathing) through green, wavy fields of rice, and pastures fresh and plentiful, and dived into the cool verdure of groves and gardens, and quenched my hot eyes in shade, as if in deep rushing

waters.

Abridged from Eothen

Gaza (gā ́zä): a town of Palestine nearly fifty miles southwest of Jerusalem. For hundreds of years it has been a stopping place for caravans going from Syria to Egypt. near left (of a beast of burden); so called because next to the driver when he is on foot. —off: right (of a beast of burden); on the side away from the driver. -"there is nothing hid from

the heat thereof ": see Psalm xix.