On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt/Chapter 15

by Henry Martyn Field

 

CHAPTER XV.

 

THE GREAT AND TERRIBLE WILDERNESS.

Our marches bring great changes in a single day. Only this morning we said good-bye to the red granite, and this afternoon we take leave of the old red sandstone. It may seem a welcome change to turn our backs on a wilderness of rocky defiles. But one who has been riding for days through these wild passes, observing the fantastic forms of the cliffs and crags on either side, and their infinite variety of color, cannot without a regret turn away from these dark, sombre mountains. And to come down from all this to the desert, is a change which involves a double descent, a descent from the mountain to the plain, and from the richest colors to the perpetual glare of the naked limestone! It is a change from boundless variety to boundless monotony.

But there are always compensations in nature, by which she relieves her bleakest and most barren wastes. Scarcely had we descended into the plain which separates the great mountain region of the Peninsula from the Desert of the Wandering, before we observed new grasses and flowers peering up in the sand. A new geological formation had brought a new vegetation, and Dr. Post found fresh specimens for his collection of the Flora of the Desert. Monotonous and tiresome as it was, as we kept on our weary march all the afternoon, yet as the wide plain opened a view to the west, we saw the sun setting over the Egyptian mountains on the other side of the Red Sea. Meanwhile the great wall before us rose higher as we advanced across the plain, and even its white, bare cliffs took on a sudden splendor as the setting sun tinged them with the glow of departing day.

And desolate as the region is, it derives interest from the journeyings of the children of Israel. As they moved northward from Sinai, they must have crossed this plain, and scaled that mountain range, which would have been an insurmountable barrier if it had been held by an opposing force: for it is a thousand feet in height, and so steep that, as we look up from below, the cliffs are like the battlements of a walled city. There are but four passes by which they can be ascended. We directed our course to the Pass of Er Rakineh, and when we drew near to the foot of the hills, we pitched our tents, as a prudent soldier sometimes camps for the night in full view of a fortress which he is to attack on the morrow. Here we lay down, as it were, "on our arms," to be ready to spring up at the tap of the drum. The morning brought us its new experiences, which, as we shall see, were not without a charm of their own.

The most picturesque sight on the desert is that of a caravan in motion — a long line of camels, following one another in single file, moving slowly but steadily across the waste, and disappearing on the horizon. The picturesqueness is increased when, as this morning, the camel-line moves up a height which brings it into bolder relief. As our camp was but a short distance from the mountains, we reached them at sunrise, and then took a foot-path, which, as it led directly up the steep, took us to the top in a couple of hours; while the camels, as they carried heavy loads, were obliged to take a more circuitous route, and were an hour longer in making the ascent. But this slow movement gave us one of the most striking scenes we had had on the desert, as they went zigzag along the breast of the mountains, coming at every turn into distinct outline against the sky. When we reached the top, we sat down on a pile of rocks, and looked back over the plain to the sacred mountains, which we knew we should never see again. From this time we could no longer get a view even on the distant horizon, but we had hoped this morning, as the sun rose, we might have vouchsafed to us one more last look. There indeed was Serbal, with its peaks clear against the sky, and farther down was Sinai, but wrapped in cloud, as when the Lord came down upon its summit; and we saw it no more. This was a real disappointment. It was with a feeling as if the face of the Lord were hidden from us, that we uncovered our heads, and bade farewell to Sinai forever.

But below us the sun shone brightly on the sand, which was of dazzling whiteness, and glistened like the sea. Clouds were flying over the sky, casting great shadows upon the plain. From scenes like this come those images, so often used in the Bible, of shifting sand and drifting clouds, as emblems of our transient human existence.

At last the camels reached us, and we launched on our new voyage. As we seated ourselves in the saddle, and cast our eyes round the horizon, the character of the country was at once apparent. It is a vast plateau, or table-land, in general outline not unlike one of the steppes of Asia. It is not however an unbroken plain, but crossed by mountain ranges, not so grand as those of the lower part of the Peninsula, but still of considerable height, between which are broad spaces of desert farrowed by water courses. Scarcely had we left the edge of the cliff before we dropped down into one of the gullies by which this vast tract is seamed and scarred, and kept moving on from one to another, as we had traversed a succession of wadies in going to Sinai. Sometimes we rose on an elevation, from which we took in a more extensive view, and saw mountains in the distance. These smaller hollows worn by streams, like the affluents of a river, finally merge into the Wady el Arish (which we entered in the afternoon), which is to the Desert of the Wandering what the Wady es Sheikh is among the mountains of granite and sandstone, and which bears the great name of the River of Egypt — a term which, as used in the Bible, does not designate the Nile, but this mighty wady, which keeps its course to the sea, coming out near Gaza, and forming the boundary between Egypt and Palestine.

Of course the chief interest of this desolate region is that it is none other than the Great and Terrible Wilderness, in which the Israelites passed all but three of their forty years of wandering. It has always been the tradition, that the march from Egypt to Sinai took about fifty days; and scholars reckon the time of the encampment in the region of Sinai at one year, lacking a few days; when the host of Israel moved northward, and crossing the sandy belt which we passed over yesterday, climbed into this great upland. When they entered it, they could not have intended to remain there, for Moses would not have chosen such a desolate region for a long encampment. They took it on the march to the land promised to their fathers, and advanced nearly through it, when they were driven back by the fierce tribes that inhabited the country. Thus repulsed, they withdrew and pitched their tents in the wilderness, moving from place to place, but never crossing its boundary for more than thirty-seven years, when they turned south to the head of the Gulf of Akaba, and passing round the mountains, came up through Moab, on the east side of the Dead Sea, to Nebo, where Moses died, and from which Joshua, shortly after, led the tribes across the Jordan. My friend, the Rev. Dr. Hitchcock of New York, President of the Union Theological Seminary, has kindly furnished the following table of the time of the Israelites in their successive journeyings:

	Years.	Months.	Days.
From Egypt to Sinai	—	1	16
At Sinai	—	11	20
To Kadesh	—	4	10
In the Desert of the Wandering	37	6	—
From Kadesh to Moab	—	10	—
On the plains of Moab	—	2	—
In all, 39 years, 11 months, and 16 days.

 

This long desert life of the Israelites raises the question, often suggested before, but never so pressing as now, as to the means of their subsistence. How could two millions and a half of people find bread in the wilderness to keep them alive for thirty-seven years? Leaving for the moment the question of the miraculous supply of food, the problem may perhaps be solved in part by considering both the mode of life of the Israelites and the greater fertility of the country at the time of the Exodus in comparison with what it is to-day. The children of Israel were not unaccustomed to the desert. The patriarchs lived on it before they went down into Egypt. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were "dwellers in tabernacles," that is, in tents. They were nomads as truly as the Bedaween of the present day. They lived by their flocks and herds, moving from place to place, wherever they could find pasturage. When Joseph's brethren stood before Pharaoh, and he asked them of their occupation, they said "Thy servants are shepherds." For that reason he appointed them their place of abode not in Memphis, the capital, nor in the other cities of Egypt, but in the land of Goshen, where they could follow their accustomed occupation. They lived in Goshen, as they had lived on the desert, with their flocks of sheep and herds of cattle; and so when they came to go up out of Egypt, it was the dictate of self-preservation to take their flocks and herds with them as their means of subsistence. For them to go out into the wilderness did not involve the same hardship as it would have been for the Egyptians, for they only went back to the mode of life of their fathers. They pitched their tents on the desert, and once more dwelt in tabernacles, as the patriarchs had done before them. The Exodus for them was simply going back to their old, wandering life.

But how was subsistence found for their flocks and herds? This can only be explained by supposing that the vegetation was much more abundant then than now, of which there is ample proof. In the wadies which we passed through in going to Sinai, there were signs that at one period the mountains, if not covered with forests, yet had by no means the bare look which they now have; while the wadies, which are burnt and dry, may have been as green as the deep valleys that one finds nestled in the recesses of the Alps. All writers bear witness to the constant and suicidal practice which has been going on for centuries among the Arabs, of denuding the mountains, not only of trees but of brushwood, for their camp-fires and to burn for charcoal. This of course has caused the little mountain springs to dry up, and the vegetation to become more scanty. But still with all that man has done to destroy vegetation, there is enough in the wadies and on the hillsides to support flocks of goats; and as we advanced northward, we found large herds of camels spread over the hills. In the wilderness it is not probable that the Israelites were all in one camp. They may have been spread over a tract as large as an English county, in which were a hundred spots that could yield a temporary sustenance for their flocks and herds. But with all these alleviations of their lot, still the Israelites found this waste over which we are now passing, a Great and Terrible Wilderness. A country in which they could find no abiding place — where they were kept moving from one pasture ground to another, eating up the land before them, and leaving a desolate wilderness behind them; in constant danger, if left to themselves, of perishing by famine or by pestilence — was not a country through which millions of people could make their way unguided and alone. I repeat what I have said before, that the more I see of the desert the more the miracle of the Exodus grows upon me. How the Israelites lived through it, is a mystery which no resources of their own can explain, without the help of Him who was their Guide and Protector. In reading the story of their wanderings, we wonder not that they often fainted, and that their hearts died within them. Forty years! that is more than the lifetime of a generation. In that time old men died, and young men grew old; wives and children were buried in the sands of the desert. What a trial for the wisdom and the firmness of their great leader to keep any control of millions of people, who were at times almost starving, and often in a state of mutiny! Moses himself was sometimes ready to despair; but he withdrew into the wilderness, and alone he knelt upon the rocks or sands, and cried to Heaven for help, and then returned, with new courage in his heart, to inspire the faint and strengthen the weak, and to lead them on, until at last he brought them to the Promised Land.

We camped in the Wady el Arish. It was a bitter night. The wind blew so that we feared it would blow down our tents, and the men had to keep a sharp lookout, driving in the tent-pegs to hold them fast. At the same time the temperature was almost freezing. The same limestone surface which reflects the sun by day, radiates the heat rapidly as soon as the sun goes down; so that while the days are very hot, the nights are very cold. We have to wrap ourselves up warmly, piling blankets and overcoats upon our camp-beds, and then are sometimes almost frozen. Yet while it required our utmost efforts, even under shelter, to keep our blood stirring, the Arabs slept in the open air, with only their thin covering, and such warmth as they might get from their camp-fires.

The next morning we had a new experience. After weeks of unclouded sky in Egypt and on the desert, it was a relief to see signs of rain. Dark clouds gathered in the west. This we took to indicate our approach to the sea. It was probable that there had been a great storm on the Mediterranean, the skirts of which reached us, although we were still at a distance of perhaps a hundred miles. We had several light showers, which threatened a bad day for marching; yet we were so anxious to press on that we struck our tents and started, keeping along the Wady el Arish, which we left only to enter on a broad plain covered with flint stones, which continued, with occasional intervals, perhaps twenty miles. This flinty desert is quite different from the sandy desert; its surface is as hard as a stone, and the tracks across it seem as if they had been worn by the footsteps of caravans that had passed along the same line for generations.

Notwithstanding the occasional showers, we escaped pretty well in the morning; but in the afternoon the clouds again appeared, yet held off for a time, clinging to a chain of mountains in the west, and we thought we should run the gauntlet in safety. But suddenly, as if they espied the fugitives on the plain, they advanced directly towards us. "Now we are in for it!" said the Doctor. I dismounted, preferring to meet the enemy on foot. Soon it came. The camels turned their heads to escape the fury of the tempest. It required all the shouting of their drivers to keep their heads to the storm. Thus we struggled on. After an hour the clouds broke away, the sun came out, a rainbow spanned the sky, and we rode on in triumph. And now we had time to admire the strange formation of rocks. These limestone ranges sometimes stretch for miles, suggesting the familiar image of city walls; and as they are in places much broken, we see cropping up, again and again, the outline of old castles and towers. Here and there upon the plain stands a solitary mound, so like a pyramid that one can hardly believe it has not been fashioned by human hands.

We halted on the top of a hill, in a hollow open only to the sky. All went to work to get the camp ready, the Doctor driving the tent-pegs, and bringing stones to keep them fast, lest we should have such a blow as we had had the night before. In half an hour the tents were up, and all was snug. Better still, our men found a place where they were protected from the wind by rocks, and here they were collected round their fires, with their camels beside them. There were four camp-fires, for we had had an addition to our camp since we left Sinai, in a small party of Bedaween, who were bound to Gaza to bring back grain for the Convent As it was twelve days march, and led through tribes that might help themselves to whatever the camels carried, they asked to accompany us, that they might be under our protection. We had no objection, for in case of attack their swords and guns would be a welcome addition to ours, and we could combine our forces for the common defence.

I wonder if I can make a picture of the scene around our camp-fires, as I saw it that evening.

The camp-fire is the delight of the Bedaween. No sooner are our tents pitched, and our wants attended to, and the camels fed, than the men scatter about, pulling up little shrubs and brushwood that grow on the desert, which make a quick fire. These they pile on until the ground is thoroughly heated, and they have a glowing bed of coals. Meanwhile one of the Arabs pours out of a sack perhaps a peck of meal upon a piece of coarse cloth, much the worse for wear, and adding a little water and salt, kneads it into a dough, which, when of the proper consistency, is flattened out like a huge pancake, looking very much like the chipatties in India. Then the bed of coals is raked open, and the cake laid carefully upon it, and the glowing ashes raked over it. While this is going on, observe the faces of the Arabs gathered round the fire! Every step of the process is watched with eager interest. How their eyes glisten in the firelight! Talk of a dinner prepared by a French cook: it is nothing to the feast of these children of the desert, to which they come with appetites sharpened by hunger. As I watch them night after night, I think how much more they enjoy their supper than we do ours, since they have the pleasure of preparing it as well as of eating it. We, who partake of our meals only when they are placed before us, do not know the exquisite delight of those who enjoy a feast beforehand by witnessing its preparation. This is one of the things which give so keen a zest to gypsy life, and which civilized folk try to imitate in a poor way by getting up a picnic. They find that the same food tastes much better when a whole party are sitting on the grass under a tree, than if it were served on a table. This free outdoor life our Arabs have every day, and their evening meal is one prolonged enjoyment from the time the camp-fire is blazing. We, sitting in our tent, have a regular dinner, with soup and three courses of meat and vegetables, and a dessert of oranges and figs and almonds and raisins, winding up with a delicious cup of coffee. This is very well; but, after all, we only get one meal, while our poor fellows, whom we pity so, feast all the time that the supper is preparing, and devour it a hundred times with their eyes before they take it into their mouths. By-and-by the heap of coals is opened, and the cake turned over. A few minutes more, and the cooking is complete. What would Charles Lamb, who wrote with such delicious humor of the enjoyment in the cooking as well as the eating of roast pig, say to this feast of the desert? When the loaf comes out, it is certainly well done, though thickly crusted with ashes. However, they do not mind that; but dusting it off with an old rag, proceed to break it up into a pot with some greasy mixture, making the whole a thick porridge. Thus the meal is prepared, and now the circle gathers round it, when a boy comes along with a water-skin, pouring a little on the fingers of all in the group, who then proceed, one after the other, to dip their hands in the dish. How their faces shine as they take the savory mess! When they have scraped the pot with their fingers till not a thimbleful remains, then comes the crown of the feast — what is better to them than any dessert — the pipe! They bring out their chibouques, and fill them, and take long, long drafts — deep inhalations. If any one is so unfortunate as not to have a pipe, or tobacco to fill it, his neighbor, in the true spirit of Oriental hospitality, takes his own pipe from his mouth, and puts it into the mouth of his brother, and thus they rejoice together. All these things combined make a feast which an epicure might envy.

But this is not all. Then begins the flow of conversation, which is the delight of the Bedaween, as of more civilized peoples. The camp-fire on the desert is what the club is in a city: it is the place of the "conversazione", where the Arabs tell all the gossip of the camp or the tribe, and discuss the matters of their little world with as much eagerness as the politics of England are discussed in the clubs of London. The amusement which Frenchmen would seek in a theatre, these simple children of the desert find in telling stories, which are often received with shouts of laughter, and which not seldom are continued fay into the night. At length the laughter ceases, the fires grow dim, and the Arab

"Wraps the drapery of his couch about him,"

(which consists of his one miserable garment)

"And lies down to pleasant dreams."

"Dreams"! Does the Bedawee ever dream? Yes indeed: wny should he not dream? All the riches he possesses lie in the land of dreams. Sleeping on the desert, under the sky, he sees visions and dreams dreams of all which makes the delight of an Arab's existence. That poor fellow who lies there with his head in the sand, is dreaming now of the Oasis of Feiran, of the running brook and the palms that bend over it, and of his companions who watch the flocks of black goats on the mountain side. But whatever his dreams, they do not interrupt his deep, sound slumber. That group round the smouldering campfire lie motionless as if in death, yet are ready to spring up at the first streak of dawn.

As the next day was our sixth since we left Mount Sinai, and we wished to be at Nukhl for our camp over Sunday, and feared lest we might be delayed by rain, we started at an early hour, so early indeed that a little after noon we reached the great plain, at the farther end of which we descried the fort. Nukhl is a notable place on the desert, as it is the chief station on the route of pilgrimage from Cairo to Mecca, being midway between the Gulfs of Suez and Akaba. Here once in the year is witnessed the most extraordinary spectacle in the world: a train of camels that seems almost endless comes up out of the western horizon, and moves slowly to the east. Vast encampments are pitched around the fort, which was built for this express purpose, to give protection to the pilgrims, and to furnish food and water to them and to their camels. Fifty Egyptian soldiers are quartered here — some of them old soldiers of Ibrahim Pasha — to furnish any protection which is needed, while their families live in a little cluster of mud-houses under the walls of the fort.

If the sight of such a structure (the only building we had seen since we left the Convent at Mount Sinai) was an object of interest to us, no less was the approach of a caravan coming across the desert an object of interest to them. Our arrival put the encampment into commotion. The whole garrison turned out to see us pass, officers and soldiers, and the women of the village, and children too — every mother's son of them was there to behold the advent of the Howadjis. We did not halt to receive their homage, but swept majestically round the fort, and encamped on the northern side.

Hardly had we pitched our tents before the officer in command appeared. He was not a very imposing representative of the military profession. To tell the truth, he was a battered hulk, perhaps the wreck of old wars, but answered well enough for such an out-of-the-way post. He made us many salaams, and invited us to his castle — an invitation with which we speedily complied. In ascending the stairs to his room, we nearly blundered into the harem, which of course caused a little flutter. However, we soon got into the right place, where we sipped our coffee with due satisfaction. The old soldier then took us over the fort — a rude square building, which can be considered a fortification only by courtesy. It had in the court a single cannon, which is reserved, I suppose, for saluting on great occasions, as when a prince or other grand personage makes the pilgrimage to Mecca. The fort has one provision against a siege in a capacious well, from which the water is drawn up by a wheel and buckets. As this water is not needed for a besieged garrison, it is conveyed by a small aqueduct to large tanks outside the fort, near the northern wall. These tanks seem indeed as if they might furnish water for an army. There is also a well outside, fifty feet deep and about fifty feet in circumference, encircled by a huge trough of stone, from which twenty or thirty camels could drink at once. The next morning the herds were driven in from the desert to fill up the cisterns within them with a supply for days. Here camels bound on the pilgrimage drink to the full before setting out; while their masters, drawing up the water in leathern buckets, which are let down by goat's-hair cords, fill their water-skins for their long march across the desert.

When we had thus inspected the "Fort of Nukhl," and made all sorts of flattering speeches to its gallant commander, we thought we had performed the courtesies of the occasion. But not so the old Colonel. He accompanied us back to our tent. We offered him a chair, but he preferred to squat, like a Turk, on our rugs. We then tried to engage him in conversation, but his resources were not great. Evidently his ideas of the world did not extend beyond Cairo and Constantinople. At length we were at a loss how to entertain a visitor who sat like an Indian sachem in his wigwam, answering only with grunts. We found we had an elephant on our hands. He seemed in no haste to terminate his visit. On the slightest suggestion, he was ready to stay to dinner, or indeed to spend the night; in fact, he would have taken up his quarters with us over Sunday. We found that Oriental hospitality had its embarrassments as well as its pleasures. We were put to our wits to know how to get rid of this ponderous creature. Of course it must be done with strict regard to courtesy. A happy thought struck us, and we called the dragoman to our relief: "Yohanna, could you not invite the Governor into your quarters?" He took in the situation in an instant, and advancing in the blandest manner, requested the honor of his Excellency's presence in the adjoining tent, to partake of coffee and smoke the chibouque. The temptation was too powerful to be resisted. The old man found his legs, which were curled up somewhere under him, and waddled off. Half an hour after we saw him in the next tent, with wreaths of smoke curling round his head, and a serene self-complacency on his broad features, like a smile on the face of a Chinese idol.

Towards evening a file of soldiers marched down from the fort with military step, and took their places in front of our tents to be our protectors for the night. We bade them welcome, and directed that they be treated with hospitality. They soon made friends with our Arabs, and stacking their guns, are now sitting round the camp-fire, smoking their pipes. Thus guarded by Moslem soldiers, on a spot which is every year overspread with the vast Moslem camp, we sleep to-night, as if we were a couple of dervishes on a pilgrimage to Mecca.