The camels with which I traversed this part of the Desert were very different in their ways and habits from those that you get on a frequented route.  They were never led.  There was not the slightest sign of a track in this part of the Desert, but the camels never failed to choose the right line.  By the direction taken at starting they knew, I suppose, the point (some encampment) for which they were to make.  There is always a leading camel (generally, I believe, the eldest), who marches foremost, and determines the path for the whole party.  If it happens that no one of the camels has been accustomed to lead the others, there is very great difficulty in making a start.  If you force your beast forward for a moment, he will contrive to wheel and draw back, at the same time looking at one of the other camels with an expression and gesture exactly equivalent to apres vous.  The responsibility of finding the way is evidently assumed very unwillingly.  After some time, however, it becomes understood that one of the beasts has reluctantly consented to take the lead, and he accordingly advances for that purpose.  For a minute or two he goes on with much indecision, taking first one line and then another, but soon by the aid of some mysterious sense he discovers the true direction, and follows it steadily from morning to night.  When once the leadership is established, you cannot by any persuasion, and can scarcely by any force, induce a junior camel to walk one single step in advance of the chosen guide.

On the fifth day I came to an oasis, called the Wady el Arish, a ravine, or rather a gully, through which during a part of the year there runs a stream of water.  On the sides of the gully there were a number of those graceful trees which the Arabs call tarfa.  The channel of the stream was quite dry in the part at which we arrived, but at about half a mile off some water was found, which, though very muddy, was tolerably sweet.  This was a happy discovery, for all the water that we had brought from the neighbourhood of Suez was rapidly putrefying.

The want of foresight is an anomalous part of the Bedouin’s character, for it does not result either from recklessness or stupidity.  I know of no human being whose body is so thoroughly the slave of mind as that of the Arab.  His mental anxieties seem to be for ever torturing every nerve and fibre of his body, and yet with all this exquisite sensitiveness to the suggestions of the mind, he is grossly improvident.  I recollect, for instance, that when setting out upon this passage of the Desert my Arabs, in order to lighten the burthen of their camels, were most anxious that we should take with us only two days’ supply of water.  They said that by the time that supply was exhausted we should arrive at a spring which would furnish us for the rest of the journey.  My servants very wisely, and with much pertinacity, resisted the adoption of this plan, and took care to have both the large skins well filled.  We proceeded and found no water at all, either at the expected spring or for many days afterwards, so that nothing but the precaution of my own people saved us from the very severe suffering which we should have endured if we had entered upon the Desert with only a two days’ supply.  The Arabs themselves being on foot would have suffered much more than I from the consequences of their improvidence.