instinctively felt the wisdom of keeping quiet, or that they merely obeyed the natural inclination to silence which one feels in the early morning, I cannot tell, but I know that, except when they exchanged a syllable or two relative to the work they were about, not a word was said.  I now believe that this quietness of our party created an undefined terror in the minds of the cave-holders and scared them from coming on; it gave them a notion that we were relying on some resources which they knew not of.  Several times the fellows tried to lash themselves into a state of excitement which might do instead of pluck.  They would raise a great shout and sway forward in a dense body from behind the thicket; but when they saw that their bravery thus gathered to a head did not even suspend the strapping of a portmanteau or the tying of a hatbox, their shout lost its spirit, and the whole mass was irresistibly drawn back like a wave receding from the shore.

These attempts at an onset were repeated several times, but always with the same result.  I remained under the apprehension of an attack for more than half-an-hour, and it seemed to me that the work of packing and loading had never been done so slowly.  I felt inclined to tell my fellows to make their best speed, but just as I was going to speak I observed that every one was doing his duty already; I therefore held my peace and said not a word, till at last Mysseri led up my horse and asked me if I were ready to mount.

We all marched off without hindrance.

After some time we came across a party of Ibrahim’s cavalry, which had bivouacked at no great distance from us.  The knowledge that such a force was in the neighbourhood may have conduced to the forbearance of the cave-holders.

We saw a scraggy-looking fellow nearly black, and wearing nothing but a cloth round the loins; he was tending flocks.  Afterwards I came up with another of these goatherds, whose helpmate was with him.  They gave us some goat’s milk, a welcome present.  I pitied the poor devil of a goatherd for having such a very plain wife.  I spend an enormous quantity of pity upon that particular form of human misery.

About midday I began to examine my map and to question my guide, who at last fell on his knees and confessed that he knew nothing of the country in which we were.  I was thus thrown upon my own resources, and calculating that on the preceding day we had nearly performed a two days’ journey, I concluded that the Dead Sea must be near.  In this I was right, for at about three or four o’clock in the afternoon I caught a first sight of its dismal face.

I went on and came near to those waters of death.  They stretched deeply into the southern desert, and before me, and all around, as far away as the eye could follow, blank hills piled high over hills, pale, yellow, and naked, walled up in her tomb for ever the dead and damned Gomorrah.  There was no fly that hummed in the forbidden air, but instead a deep stillness; no grass grew from the earth, no weed peered through the void sand; but in mockery of all life there were trees borne down by Jordan in some ancient flood, and these, grotesquely planted upon the forlorn shore, spread out their grim skeleton arms, all scorched and charred to blackness by the heats of the long silent years.