GOING ON PILGRIMAGE.
“Still onward winds the dreary way;
I with it.”
“A glorious morning!” was our remark as we met at breakfast on March 28th. “Just the day for a pilgrimage to Mar Saba.”
The hour was early, but long before we had risen the shouts of Ameen and a muleteer mingling with the tramp of horses announced the arrival of part of our escort.
The Arab is a restless as well as a vociferating person, and cannot comprehend why the average Saxon goes to bed regularly at night, sleeps till morning, and keeps awake all day. For himself, well, the hour of repose and the nature of his couch are matters of perfect indifference. He takes his dog sleep like Sairey Gamp imbibed her spirits—“when so dispoged.”
If you tell him your wish is to start at eight in the morning, behold, he is knocking at your door before sunrise, and imploring you to make haste. He is convinced in his own mind that the intervening hours will be spent in the absurdities of washing and dressing. If you remonstrate, he shrugs his shoulders, and you may presently hear him confiding to his friend, that “the English are a strange people. True, Allah made them, but He alone can understand them!”
We were very punctual on this particular morning, and at seven o’clock had mounted our rough little horses, whose wonderful necklaces and charms formed no small part of their equipment.
The muleteer highly entertained us. He was a round-faced, scantily-clothed youth, whose evident pride in his cattle was manifest as he pointed to their decorations. He greeted us with broad grins and “Bon jour!” These words being the only scrap of a foreign tongue he had picked up, they were employed in season and out of season. Whenever one of our party looked pleased, or nodded kindly to him, he would stiffen himself, beam on her, and, with a fine air, roll out the salutation, “Bon jour!”