which else had been of the desert a part.

The Arab has impressed his language upon everything south and
east of Judea, so, in his tongue, the old Jebel is the parent of
numberless wadies which, intersecting the Roman road--now a dim
suggestion of what once it was, a dusty path for Syrian pilgrims
to and from Mecca--run their furrows, deepening as they go, to
pass the torrents of the rainy season into the Jordan, or their
last receptacle, the Dead Sea. Out of one of these wadies--or,
more particularly, out of that one which rises at the extreme end
of the Jebel, and, extending east of north, becomes at length
the bed of the Jabbok River--a traveller passed, going to the
table-lands of the desert. To this person the attention of the
reader is first besought.

Judged by his appearance, he was quite forty-five years old.
His beard, once of the deepest black, flowing broadly over his
breast, was streaked with white. His face was brown as a parched
coffee-berry, and so hidden by a red kufiyeh (as the kerchief of
the head is at this day called by the children of the desert)
as to be but in part visible. Now and then he raised his eyes,
and they were large and dark. He was clad in the flowing garments
so universal in the East; but their style may not be described
more particularly, for he sat under a miniature tent, and rode
a great white dromedary.

It may be doubted if the people of the West ever overcome the impression
made upon them by the first view of a camel equipped and loaded for
the desert. Custom, so fatal to other novelties, affects this feeling
but little. At the end of long journeys with caravans, after years of