“Who do you suppose made it, Uncle George, was it Joseph?”
“It must be much older than the Joseph you mean, the Joseph of the Bible,” his uncle replied. “It may be almost as old as the Pyramids. Lake Moeris has shrunk to that lake you see in the distance, the Birket-el-Qurun. We’re going to camp on the other side of it to-night.”
“But I thought there was no water in the desert!” cried Perry, feeling in some way that the trip would not have to be as heroic in endurance as he expected.
“You’re welcome to all of that water you can drink,” was the reply. “Even a thirsty camel won’t drink it, not on the northern side, at least. And what a thirsty camel won’t drink must be mighty bad water, you can make quite sure of that.”
“Does anything drink it?”
“Some of the wild life of the desert comes down,” was the reply. “I’ve seen gazelle, quite often, the little Dorcas Gazelle, especially. That’s a tiny beast, Perry, not more than three feet high and usually even smaller.”
“With horns?”
“Pretty lyre-shaped horns a foot long. You often see them around the western end of Birket-el-Qurun, and occasionally at this end.
“I’d like a head for a trophy!”
“Can you reach your rifle easily? If you can, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t get a gazelle if you have a chance. I’m not much of a believer in mere shooting for the sake of shooting, but I don’t go to extremes, and a gazelle more or less won’t make much difference to the desert fauna. There is such a thing as sport. What I hate is the kind of so-called sportsman who takes a delight in seeing how many he can ‘bag.’”