Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: IV IN CAMP AT BEERSHEBA WE came to Beersheba from Edh Dahariyeh next day, in a windstorm, a driving gale, the horses lagging dispirited. The air was parching and misty with dust blown in from the wilderness; and some idle old wiseacres, loitering near, said that all travellers in the sandy desert would be in peril. It is a mushroom trading settlement, for these six years a struggling market-place; they had digged up the ruins of the ancient city to make new habitations: a turn of the spade, and here are the squared blocks of fallen palaces ready to hand. The kaimakam said that we must ride thence to Gaza on our way to El Arish, or ride no farther on our journey, lest we come to harm on the plains, where, said he, were many Bedouins and no familiar paths. "Everybody," said this timid man, "rides to Gaza, and therefore must you. If you took the path of your choosing, and met with evil treatment, how should I escape?" We would not buy his acquiescence (were that his meaning), but quietly planned to depart in the early morning, choosing the shorter way to the half-way station of Rafieh, which was to our liking. There at Beersheba are Abraham's wells; and this being the very frontier of the hardiest tourist wanderings—the farthest objective of all those devoted pilgrimages which astound and disquiet the simple traveller—we determined that our departure thence upon the untrodden ways into Egypt should in some meet way be signalized. It was no flagrant expression of distaste for trip-ticket company, which, in Palestine, whatever elsewhere, is somehow peculiarly grateful even to the hapless apostate (as I have been told)—like the sweet simplicity of children. Our small celebration should be like a saucy snap of the fingers directed at whatsoever had been irksome or fearful or bew...