GROTTO OF THE INFANT JESUS.

73

one there, in active operation every day, and it was said to weigh seven tons.

Having paid the Arabs, given buckshish to their children, and complimented the old sheik of the village, I mounted my donkey and rode back towards the Nile. The heat of the sun was awful; and I felt that I had been both over-fatigued and over-excited, and when I came at last to the river, while the Arabs were preparing the boat, I cooled my head, hands, and feet in the water. When crossing I sat on the edge of the deck trailing my legs in the stream; and when I landed I drank a tumblerful of sherbet and water. But still I felt unusually restless, with a prickling heat over my whole body. When riding through the streets of Old Cairo, I became sick, vomited, and almost fainted again on the donkey. But I did not omit to visit the place where Joseph and Mary hid the infant Jesus for a time. And by calling up my courage, and riding with care, I succeeded in reaching Shepherd's Hotel; but with some difficulty. The judicious and kindhearted landlord advised me to take a warm bath and a sound sleep, which he said were the two greatest luxuries in Egypt. No wonder that the heat everpowered me, when riding from the Pyramids back to the Nile, for I was exposed to the scorching breeze of the Khamseen wind. Its breath felt hot to the touch as if it had come from a furnace,-so hot indeed, that the ends of the hairs of the head crinkled and curled when exposed to it. I also held up the fibres of a feather before it; and noticed how they started and shrank. On a similar occasion Lord Lindsay mentions that a book, which was in his pocket, was scorched as if it had been held to the fire. The whole sky this day was obscured by a veil of yellowish grey, that shut out the face of the sun, and the scorching blasts

G

74

SICKNESS, A WARM BATH AND SLEEP.

by closing up the pores of the skin fevered the blood, so that my heart fluttered, my pulse bounded quickly, and my head ached with a burning pain. After a comfortable bath, and a cup of refreshing tea, I went to bed, and slept calmly till the next morning, and rose quite well again.*

It is scarcely worth while to state that I was twice in Grand Cairo: once before I crossed the desert to Suez, and that only for an hour before noon, when I saw nothing; and again when I returned from the Red Sea, when I remained for days and saw everything. In my narrative I have made no reference to either of these respective visits; but I have stated the facts in a general way only.

CHAPTER IV.

ᎢᎻᎬ ᎠᎬᏚᎬᎡᎢ.

THE telegraph announced that the Haddington steamer had arrived from India, and the passengers from the Ripon were ordered to start at mid-day to a minute, to cross the desert to the Red Sea, so hallowed by Biblical recollections. At the appointed time a crowd of vans drove up to the door of Shepherd's Hotel: and into these we were all packed closely like so many herrings in a barrel. The entrance, being at the back, was by a low wooden door and by the help of an iron stirrup. The van had two strong red wheels. Above these, fixed by what the Egyptians call springs, the body of it in the shape of a baker's cart was perched on high. It was covered with thin cloth as if to defend from the heat of the sun. At each side there was a narrow wooden bench fixed, on which six persons might sit, but these were so near that passengers were jammed knee to knee and chin to chin like tooth and pinion in a mill-wheel: and even this scanty allowance of room was encroached on by the little railed seat of the driver jutting inward. In front, and on each side of the van, there were pigeon holes to peep out at. Crack, crack went the whip, but the four little sinewy Arabian horses had a mind of their own; and for a time ran

76

MEDLEY AT STARTING.

riot into all manner of confusion. This fancy of theirs. spread as if by infection; and for long there was a dangerous scene of prancing among upwards of thirty vans. But the drivers managed with wonderful dexterity, and no accident happened in the medley. At last the whole set off simultaneously at full speed as if in a steeple-chase along the broad splendid avenue leading to the Desert. And what a spread there was among the Christians, Jews, Turks, Copts, and Arabians, camels, donkeys, and dogs, all running out of the way as if for their lives! The road immediately out from Cairo is magnificent, through gardens and palaces and military stations of every variety and oriental splendour. These left behind, I entered the Desert, which continues across the whole isthmus. For part of the way a good road has been formed, and I passed a body of men employed in carrying forward the work. But a few miles onward, and we had nothing of the sort to guide us but the tracks of the camelsthese docile ships of the wilderness-which are constantly going and coming night and day to the number of seven thousand. And one rocky eminence after another, and slopes of gravel, and boulder stones, the occasional marks of wheels, the skeletons of vultures, the half eaten carcases of dromedaries, or a broken rim, or the whole bulk of an old minibus, served as so many finger posts from station to station. When the camel refuses to rise, the Arabs universally leave him to his fate. It is seldom that they get on their legs again. I have seen them thus abandoned, and noticed their looks of agony as with mute eloquence they gazed after the receding caravan. When death thus approaches, the poor solitary vultures espy or scent their prey at an incredible distance, and assembling in flocks and

ARABIAN RATE OF SPEED.

77

darting on the body, they begin to feed on this faithful servant of man, even before life is extinct.

The surface of the wilderness is one gentle rise of about nine hundred feet till near Suez; the greatest elevation being at the station No. 12. Towards Suez the ascent is about Going as the cavalcade did at the

seventy feet in the mile. full gallop, at first the jolting of the vans merely increased our merriment; but when the motion came to be nothing else but bumping and thumping over boulder and rock, I thought my bones would be smashed into jelly. The horses were never suffered to relax their pace for one moment. The rate of speed was beyond anything European. It was truly Arabian; tearing us through the air like witches on a broom-stick. The cavalcade proceeded all in a body; and whips were cracking, drivers calling, and passengers roaring out to one another through the small open wickets of their carriages. And, like a flock of geese high in the air, the groups were assuming every variety of shape; sometimes going in close column, and now one was first, and then another, then they would assume Indian file, then they would spread out and take the broad wilderness abreast. And thus one station was scarcely passed before another came in sight, glittering white and afar in the clear atmosphere. Superintendents from the government clad in Egyptian uniform, and riding on horseback, accompanied us to keep order. When on one occasion I urged and bribed the driver to go in advance, he said that if he disobeyed his superintendent's orders, he might be hanged, or at any rate bastinadoed at the first station.

But the sun became fiercer and fiercer in the cloudless sky; and the blanched surface of the Desert glared under his fiery beams; so that the reflection painfully dazzled