It is to be noted, although the Omnipotent Creator might have found, had it pleased him, in the humblest of his creations, an efficient agent for his purpose, however difficult and sublime, that Divine Majesty has never thought fit to communicate except with human beings of the very highest powers. They are always men who have manifested an extraordinary aptitude for great affairs, and the possession of a fervent and commanding genius. They are great legislators, or great warriors, or great poets, or orators of the most vehement and impassioned spirit. Such were Moses, Joshua, the heroic youth of Hebron, and his magnificent son; such, too, was Isaiah, a man, humanly speaking, not inferior to Demosthenes, and struggling for a similar and as beautiful a cause, the independence of a small state, eminent for its intellectual power, against the barbarian grandeur of a military empire. All the great things have been done by the little nations. It is the Jordan and the Ilyssus that have civilised the modern races. An Arabian tribe, a clan of the Ægean, have been the promulgators of all our knowledge; and we should never have heard of the Pharaohs, of Babylon the great and Nineveh the superb, of Cyrus and of Xerxes, had not it been for Athens and Jerusalem.
Tancred rose with the sun from his encampment at Hebron, to traverse, probably, the same route pursued by the spies when they entered the Land of Promise. The transition from Canaan to the stony Arabia is not abrupt. A range of hills separates Palestine from a high but level country similar to the Syrian desert, sandy in some places, but covered in all with grass and shrubs; a vast expanse of downs. Gradually the herbage disappears, and the shrubs are only found tufting the ridgy tops of low undulating sandhills. Soon the sand becomes stony, and no trace of vegetation is ever visible excepting occasionally some thorny plant. Then comes a land which alternates between plains of sand and dull ranges of monotonous hills covered with loose flints; sometimes the pilgrim winds his way through their dull ravines, sometimes he mounts the heights and beholds a prospect of interminable desolation.
For three nights had Tancred encamped in this wilderness, halting at some spot where they could find some desert shrubs that might serve as food for the camels and fuel for themselves. His tent was soon pitched, the night fires soon crackling, and himself seated at one with the Sheikh and Baroni, he beheld with interest and amusement the picturesque and flashing groups around him. Their fare was scant and simple: bread baked upon the spot, the dried tongue of a gazelle, the coffee of the neighbouring Mocha, and the pipe that ever consoles, if indeed the traveller, whatever his hardships, could need any sustenance but his own high thoughts in such a scene, canopied, too, by the most beautiful sky and the most delicious climate in the world.
They were in the vicinity of Mount Seir; on the morrow they were to commence the passage of the lofty range which stretches on to Sinai. The Sheikh, who had a feud with a neighbouring tribe, and had been anxious and vigilant while they crossed the open country, riding on with an advanced guard before his charge, reconnoitring from sandhill to sandhill, often creeping up and lying on his breast, so as not to be visible to the enemy, congratulated Tancred that all imminent danger was past.
‘Not that I am afraid of them,’ said Hassan, proudly; ‘but we must kill them or they will kill us.’ Hassan, though Sheikh of his own immediate family and followers, was dependent on the great Sheikh of the Jellaheen tribe, and was bound to obey his commands in case the complete clan were summoned to congregate in any particular part of the desert.
On the morrow they commenced their passage of the mountains, and, after clearing several ranges found themselves two hours after noon in a defile so strangely beautiful that to behold it would alone have repaid all the exertions and perils of the expedition. It was formed by precipitous rocks of a picturesque shape and of great height, and of colours so brilliant and so blended that to imagine them you must fancy the richest sunset you have ever witnessed, and that would be inferior, from the inevitable defect of its fleeting character. Here the tints, sometimes vivid, sometimes shadowed down, were always equally fair: light blue heights, streaked, perhaps, with scarlet and shaded off to lilac or purple; a cleft of bright orange; a broad peach-coloured expanse, veined in delicate circles and wavy lines of exquisite grace; sometimes yellow and purple stripes; sometimes an isolated steep of every hue flaming in the sun, and then, like a young queen on a gorgeous throne, from a vast rock of crimson, and gold rose a milk-white summit. The frequent fissures of this defile were filled with rich woods of oleander and shrubs of every shade of green, from which rose acacia, and other trees unknown to Tancred. Over all this was a deep and cloudless sky, and through it a path winding amid a natural shrubbery, which princes would have built colossal conservatories to preserve.
‘’Tis a scene of enchantment that has risen to mock us in the middle of the desert,’ exclaimed the enraptured pilgrim; ‘surely it must vanish even as we gaze!’
About half-way up the defile, when they had traversed it for about a quarter of an hour, Sheikh Hassan suddenly galloped forward and hurled his spear with great force at an isolated crag, the base of which was covered with oleanders, and then looking back he shouted to his companions. Tancred and the foremost hurried up to him.