Wilton, Mary Margaret Stanley Egerton; Wilton, Mary Margaret Stanley Egerton [Hrsg.]: The art of needle-work from the earliest ages: including some notices of the ancient historical tapestries (London: Henry Colburn Publishers, 1841)

24

NEEDLEWORK OF THE TABERNACLE.

tween visits of the adventurous traveller, or the more
frequent and startling interruptions of the wild
Arabs on their predatory expeditions.
But neither church nor temple of any sort, nor
inquiring traveller, nor prowling Arab, varied the
tremendous grandeur of the scene, when the Israel-
itish host encamped there. Weary and toilsome
had been the pilgrimage from the base of the moun-
tain where the desolation was unrelieved by a trace of
vegetation, to the upper country or wilderness,
called more particularly, “ the Desert of Sinai,”
where narrow intersecting valleys, not destitute of
verdure, cherished perhaps the lofty and refreshing
palm. Here in the ravines, in the valleys, and
amid the clefts of the rocks, clustered the hosts of
Israel, while around them on every side arose lofty
summits and towering precipices, where the eye that
sought to scan their fearful heights was lost in the
far-off dimness. Far, far around, spread this savage
wilderness, so frowning, and dreary, and desolate,
that any curious explorer beyond the precincts of the
camp would quickly return to the home which its
vicinity afforded even there.
Clustered closely as bees in a hive were the tents
of the wandering race, yet with an order and a uni-
formity which even the unpropitious nature of the
locality was not permitted to break ; for, separated
into tribes, each one, though sufficiently connected
for any object of kindness or brotherhood, for public
worship, or social intercourse, was inalienably dis-
tinct.
And in the midst, extending from east to west, a
length of fifty-five feet, was reared the splendid