DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.12664#0263
250
INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL.
"will continue to be kept, until one of them shall
have a strong probability of profit and success in
breaking it. Upon the whole, however, the Be-
douins of Mount Sinai are rather afraid of Moham-
med Aly, and he has a great rod over them in his
power of excluding them from Cairo, where they
come to exchange their dates and apricots for grain,
clothing, weapons, and ammunition. As they told
me themselves, before his time they had been great
robbers, and now a robbery is seldom heard of
among them. ■ '
For two days we had been suffering for want of
water. The skins with which I had been provided
by the consul's janizary at Cairo were so new that
they contaminated the water ; and it had at last be-
come so bad, that, fearful of injurious effects from
drinking it, and preferring the evil of thirst to that
of sickness, I had poured it all out upon the sand.
Toualeb had told me that some time during the
day we should come to a fountain, but the evening
was drawing nigh and we had not reached it. For-
tunately, we had still a few oranges left, which
served to moisten our parched mouths, and we
were in the momentary expectation of coming to
the water, when Toualeb discovered some marks,
from which he told us that it was yet three hours
distant. We had no apprehension of being re-
duced to the extremity of thirst, but for men who
had already been suffering some time, the prolon-
gation of such thirst was by no means pleasant,,
During those three hours I thought of nothing but
water. Rivers were flowing through my imagina-
INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL.
"will continue to be kept, until one of them shall
have a strong probability of profit and success in
breaking it. Upon the whole, however, the Be-
douins of Mount Sinai are rather afraid of Moham-
med Aly, and he has a great rod over them in his
power of excluding them from Cairo, where they
come to exchange their dates and apricots for grain,
clothing, weapons, and ammunition. As they told
me themselves, before his time they had been great
robbers, and now a robbery is seldom heard of
among them. ■ '
For two days we had been suffering for want of
water. The skins with which I had been provided
by the consul's janizary at Cairo were so new that
they contaminated the water ; and it had at last be-
come so bad, that, fearful of injurious effects from
drinking it, and preferring the evil of thirst to that
of sickness, I had poured it all out upon the sand.
Toualeb had told me that some time during the
day we should come to a fountain, but the evening
was drawing nigh and we had not reached it. For-
tunately, we had still a few oranges left, which
served to moisten our parched mouths, and we
were in the momentary expectation of coming to
the water, when Toualeb discovered some marks,
from which he told us that it was yet three hours
distant. We had no apprehension of being re-
duced to the extremity of thirst, but for men who
had already been suffering some time, the prolon-
gation of such thirst was by no means pleasant,,
During those three hours I thought of nothing but
water. Rivers were flowing through my imagina-