We traversed some miles of desolate country whose
soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds—a
silent, mournful expanse, wherein we saw only three
persons—Arabs, with nothing on but a long
coarse shirt like the “tow-linen” shirts
which used to form the only summer garment of little
negro boys on Southern plantations. Shepherds
they were, and they charmed their flocks with the
traditional shepherd’s pipe—a reed
instrument that made music as exquisitely infernal
as these same Arabs create when they sing.
In their pipes lingered no echo of the wonderful music
the shepherd forefathers heard in the Plains of Bethlehem
what time the angels sang “Peace on earth, good
will to men.”
Part of the ground we came over was not ground at
all, but rocks—cream-colored rocks, worn
smooth, as if by water; with seldom an edge or a corner
on them, but scooped out, honey-combed, bored out with
eye-holes, and thus wrought into all manner of quaint
shapes, among which the uncouth imitation of skulls
was frequent. Over this part of the route were
occasional remains of an old Roman road like the Appian
Way, whose paving-stones still clung to their places
with Roman tenacity.
Gray lizards, those heirs of ruin, of sepulchres and
desolation, glided in and out among the rocks or lay
still and sunned themselves. Where prosperity
has reigned, and fallen; where glory has flamed, and
gone out; where beauty has dwelt, and passed away;
where gladness was, and sorrow is; where the pomp
of life has been, and silence and death brood in its
high places, there this reptile makes his home, and
mocks at human vanity. His coat is the color
of ashes: and ashes are the symbol of hopes that
have perished, of aspirations that came to nought,
of loves that are buried. If he could speak,
he would say, Build temples: I will lord it in
their ruins; build palaces: I will inhabit them;
erect empires: I will inherit them; bury your
beautiful: I will watch the worms at their work;
and you, who stand here and moralize over me:
I will crawl over your corpse at the last.
A few ants were in this desert place, but merely to
spend the summer. They brought their provisions
from Ain Mellahah—eleven miles.
Jack is not very well to-day, it is easy to see; but
boy as he is, he is too much of a man to speak of
it. He exposed himself to the sun too much yesterday,
but since it came of his earnest desire to learn, and
to make this journey as useful as the opportunities
will allow, no one seeks to discourage him by fault-finding.
We missed him an hour from the camp, and then found
him some distance away, by the edge of a brook, and
with no umbrella to protect him from the fierce sun.
If he had been used to going without his umbrella,
it would have been well enough, of course; but he
was not. He was just in the act of throwing a
clod at a mud-turtle which was sunning itself on a
small log in the brook. We said:
