206

INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL.

locanda to say farewell, I felt that I was parting
with tried and trusty friends, most probably for
ever. That such was the case with the rais, there
could be little doubt; he seemed to look upon
himself as a doomed man, and a broken cough, a
sunken eye, and a hollow cheek proclaimed him
one fast hurrying to the grave.

I was now about wandering amid new and dif-
ferent scenes. I was about to cross the drearv waste
of sand, to exchange my quiet, easy-going boat for
a caravan of dromedaries and camels ; to pitch my
tent wherever the setting sun might find me, and,
instead of my gentle Arabs of the Nile, to have for
my companions the wild, rude Bedouins of the des-
ert. To follow the wandering footsteps of the
children of Israel when they took up the bones of
Joseph, and fled before the anger of Pharaoh, from
their land of bondage ; to visit the holy mountain of
Sinai, where the Almighty, by the hands of his
servant Moses, delivered the tables of his law to
his chosen people.

But I had in view something beyond the holy
mountain. My object was to go from thence to
the Holy Land. If I should return to Suez, and
thence cross the desert to El Arich and Gaza,
I should be subjected to a quarantine of fourteen
days on account of the plague in Egypt, and I
thought I might avoid this by striking directly
through the heart of the desert from Mount Sinai,
to the frontier of the Holy Land. There were dif-
ficulties and perhaps dangers on this route ; but be-
sides the advantage of escaping the quarantine, an-