Their methods of brewing and baking are very simple. The first consists in a simple infusion of barley, which, with the young shoots of juniper, produces a weak but pleasant beverage.—In making their flad bröd, or flat bread, they mix rye-flour with water, and when the dough is well kneaded, roll it out like a pancake, but not thicker than a wafer. As fast as they are made they are placed on a gridiron, and one minute bakes them. Prepared in this way, the rye loses its coarse taste, and the bread is agreeable.
You will not, probably, be inclined to imitate them, but I am sure you will admire the ingenuity of these people in the manner they employ the black ants to make vinegar. These creatures have gigantic habitations, which, in size and appearance, are not very unlike the gamme, or hut, of the coast Laplanders. The ant hills are five feet in height; and are composed of decayed wood, pine-leaves, and bark, mixed up with earth and strengthened by bits of branches, which must require the efforts of a vast number to move. Streets and alleys branch off in every direction from the main entrance, which is a foot wide; and outside, millions of the little negroes, as they are called, may be seen bustling along heavily laden. But now for the vinegar: a bottle half full of water is plunged to the neck in one of these hills; the ants speedily creep in, and are, of course, drowned; the contents are then boiled, and a strong acid is produced, which is used for vinegar by all the inhabitants of Norlanden.
January 1, Sunday.—My uncle read to us the “Song of Moses,” after the escape of the Israelites from Pharaoh and his host. He then said; as nearly as I can recollect, “This beautiful composition is not only a thanksgiving for their memorable deliverance, but it contains also precise prophecies of the downfal of the nations of Palestine, with the settlement of the Israelites in their room; and of the establishment of the temple on Mount Zion, with the ultimate destruction of all idolatry.
“It is the most ancient poem now extant, and shews the early connexion which subsisted between poetry and religion: it is also a fine example of that species of composition in which the Hebrews excelled; namely, that of expressing in hymns of triumph their gratitude to God for his glorious protection.
“‘The mountain of thine inheritance’ alludes to Mount Moriah, or Sion, where Moses knew that God would fix his sanctuary; and which is prophetically spoken of here as already completed.
“The whole army seem to have joined with one voice in this song; and Miriam and all the women re-echoed it with equal rapture; yet while almost in the very act of expressing their gratitude, this capricious people began to murmur because there was a scarcity of water in the wilderness through which it was necessary to pass; and, because when they did come to a spring, the water was bitter. What a beginning for the new life on which they were entering! Let us act more wisely, my dear children; and, grateful for the blessings of the past, let us endeavour to deserve their continuance through the new year on which we are entering.”
We endeavoured to trace the march of the Israelites, on the map. My uncle shewed us that the wilderness of Shur was a part of that great sandy desert which divides Egypt from Palestine; and which stretches from the Mediterranean to the head of the Red Sea on both sides. It is supposed by the late celebrated traveller Burckhardt, that the place called Marah, from the bitterness of its water, is the present Howara. Its distance from the Red Sea corresponds with the three days’ march of the Israelites; and there is a well there, of which he says, “the water is so bitter, that men cannot drink it; and even camels, if not very thirsty, refuse to taste it.” Irwin, another traveller, says that in travelling 315 miles in this desert, he met with only four springs of water.
My uncle says, that Moses does not mention every place where the Israelites encamped between the Red Sea and Mount Sinai, but those only where something remarkable occurred. Elim, with its refreshing wells and shady palm trees, must have been delightful in comparison with the desert they had passed. Dr. Shaw, who visited that country the beginning of last century, found nine of the twelve wells described in Exodus; the other three had been probably filled up by those drifts of sand which are so common in Arabia. But the palm trees alluded to by Moses had increased amazingly, for, instead of threescore and ten, there were then above two thousand. Under the shade of these trees he was shewn the Hammam Mousa, or the Bath of Moses, for which the inhabitants have an extraordinary veneration, as they pretend it was the exact spot where he and his family encamped. From this place the Doctor could plainly see Mount Sinai, or, as it is called in some parts of the Bible, Mount Horeb. This seems to have been the general name of the whole mountain, while Sinai was appropriated to the summit, which had three distinct elevations: on the western one, God appeared to Moses in the bush; the middle one, which is the highest, is that on which God gave the law to Moses, and is still called Gebel Mousa, or the Mount of Moses; and the third and most easterly is called St. Catherine’s Mount, from the monastery which has been erected there.
2d.—The poor wandering gipsy died in a very few days; and my aunt immediately put her son under the care of the Franklins and the old blind man. Charley is an intelligent little fellow, but will require great care and attention; he speaks a sort of incomprehensible gibberish, and understands but little of what is said to him. The housekeeper asserts that nothing can civilize those gipsies, however early they are taken in hand; but my aunt will try what mildness and steadiness can effect: she has desired him to be treated very gently, and his faults rather overlooked, till he can be made to understand the value of a good character. My uncle has written about him to some of his mother’s relations; but unless they are capable of taking care of him he will not abandon the child. Mary and Caroline have bought some clothes for him, and as just now I have no pocket money, not having managed my last quarter well, I begged to be allowed to contribute time and work.
What an extraordinary thing it is, that these odd people, the Gipsies, should have been wandering in the same unsettled manner about the world for three centuries; and always the same dishonest impostors. My aunt shewed us a passage in Clarke’s Travels, about the gipsies of Wallachia—where he says, though they are as well inclined to steal as the rest of their tribe, they are certainly of a more civilised nature. They are divided there into different classes: some are domestics, and are employed in the principal houses; others work as gold finers and washers; some travel about as itinerant smiths; some as strolling musicians, and others are dealers in cattle. They are skilful in finding gold, and smelt it into small ingots; using for that purpose little low furnaces, which they blow by a portable bellows made of a buckskin. The construction of the bellows is very simple; an iron tube being tied into the neck of the skin which is sewn up, and two wooden handles are fastened to the legs, by which it is worked.