After coming to Goshen the Israelites probably copied the houses of the Egyptians, building villages of mud huts not unlike those I now see. These homes are rude to an extreme. Many of them are less than twenty feet square; they have flat roofs and are often so low that I can see over them as I ride by on a camel. They have no gardens or lawns. Facing the street, they are huddled together without regard to beauty or comfort.
The roofs form the woodyards of the people below. The only fuel they have is cornstalks, straw, or the bushes from which the cotton has been picked. This stuff is tied up in bundles and laid away on the roofs until used.
There are but few trees to be seen. Now and then an acacia grows along the roadway, and here and there are clumps of date palms. There are occasional fruit gardens, and I have seen many green orchards loaded with oranges.
The roads are usually high above the rest of the country. They run along the canals, and consist of the dirt banked up to hold back the waters. The side roads are chiefly camel paths or foot paths, and one sees everywhere the traffic moving along through the fields. Even on the main roads there are few wagons. Most of the freight is carried on donkeys and camels, which are the common riding animals as well. Long-legged Egyptians in turbans and gowns sit on the rumps of little donkeys, their feet almost dragging; and fierce-looking Bedouins, their headdresses tied on with ropes, bob up and down as they ride on their camels, their heads bowing at every step of the beasts. There are camels loaded with alfalfa, the grass so covering them that they look like haystacks on legs. There are donkeys laden with boxes and bags, and mules and bullocks carrying freight of one kind or another. Out in the fields one now and then sees a buffalo with a half-naked boy perched on it, and at nightfall the paths are lined with men coming from the fields riding these ungainly beasts and balancing their one-handled ploughs in front of them.
It was in Goshen that the Israelites worked after they were enslaved by the Egyptians. Here they built for Pharaoh the treasure cities of Pithom and Rameses, referred to in Exodus, from which they were sent out to build other cities and towns in various parts of the Nile Valley.
The Land of Goshen still gets much of its water by the primitive wheel turned by a blindfolded and resentful camel. This is the land which fed Jacob and his family through the years of famine in Canaan
It was through rocky wastes such as this that Moses climbed to the top of Mount Sinai and there received the Ten Commandments, and there the Lord spoke with Moses “face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend”