DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4669#0145
u8 THE LAND OF THE MONUMENTS
of visiting their encampment. The .Arabs of Ghizeh,
of whom the Sheik of the Pyramids is the chief, are
permanently settled upon the land, own certain pro-
perties, dwell regularly in houses, and have long since
ceased to be nomadic. The tents of the Arabs which
we visited were near the edge of the Desert. Our
route lay over the cultivated land, through fields
green with young corn, past a village of which all the
lower portion of the walls was of stone, evidently to
prevent the foundations being carried away by the
annual flood of the Nile, which extends to the very
edge of the Desert. The houses of the village were
all built as usual of mud bricks ; a very high Nile
might rise above the stone limit, and then the bricks
would soon become mud again, and the village
disappear.
•• Oh ! that the desert were my dwelling-place,
With one fair spirit for my mini ter,
That I might all forget the human race,
And. hating no one, love bul only her | "
" Practically," says Eothen, " I think Childe Harold
would have found it a dreadful bore to make ' the
desert his dwelling-place,' for at all events if he
adopted the life of the Arabs he would have tasted
no solitude. The tents arc partitioned, not so as to
divide the Childe and the 'fair spirit,' who is his
'minister,' from the rest of the world, but so as to
separate the twenty or thirty brown men that sit
screaming in the one compartment, from tin- fifty or
sixty brown women and children that scream and
squeal in the other. If you adopt the Aral) life for
the sake of seclusion, you will be horribly dis-
appointed, for you will find yourself in perpetual
of visiting their encampment. The .Arabs of Ghizeh,
of whom the Sheik of the Pyramids is the chief, are
permanently settled upon the land, own certain pro-
perties, dwell regularly in houses, and have long since
ceased to be nomadic. The tents of the Arabs which
we visited were near the edge of the Desert. Our
route lay over the cultivated land, through fields
green with young corn, past a village of which all the
lower portion of the walls was of stone, evidently to
prevent the foundations being carried away by the
annual flood of the Nile, which extends to the very
edge of the Desert. The houses of the village were
all built as usual of mud bricks ; a very high Nile
might rise above the stone limit, and then the bricks
would soon become mud again, and the village
disappear.
•• Oh ! that the desert were my dwelling-place,
With one fair spirit for my mini ter,
That I might all forget the human race,
And. hating no one, love bul only her | "
" Practically," says Eothen, " I think Childe Harold
would have found it a dreadful bore to make ' the
desert his dwelling-place,' for at all events if he
adopted the life of the Arabs he would have tasted
no solitude. The tents arc partitioned, not so as to
divide the Childe and the 'fair spirit,' who is his
'minister,' from the rest of the world, but so as to
separate the twenty or thirty brown men that sit
screaming in the one compartment, from tin- fifty or
sixty brown women and children that scream and
squeal in the other. If you adopt the Aral) life for
the sake of seclusion, you will be horribly dis-
appointed, for you will find yourself in perpetual