Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1858-01-21
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The Desert of Sinai.

The peninselar desert is not land without
rain, and, speaking generally of the East, we
may say that there seems to be much more rain
than we usually give it credit for. In Upper
Egypt, certainly, there is hardly such thing as
rain. That region where the wondrous ruins of
hundred temples crowd together, embamed,
and so preserved by the hot dry air, as eectually
as their tenants are by spice and odors-may be
called rainless. 1t is wholly at the mercy of
the Nile. Middle Egypt has more rain, though
little to bost of. Lower Egypt has considerably
more; and in some places might do battle with
the drouths on its own resources. But the Des-
ert has more than all Egypt together-only SO
regulated as to be useless, save for maintaining
the thin-strewn dusky shrubs which SO timidly
sprinkle its ways. 1t has its rainy seasons, dur
ing which tho clouds pour down deluge; blu
there is no such regular supply of water as to
tell even upon its lowet shollows or most shell
tered plains, save in the way of scooping out
water-courses, or tearing mp tamarsks, or cut
ting away the half gravcly, half sandy soil, in
to what the Bedouin call Jurfs. or abrading the
more impossible part of the sandstone sleeps,
or still more rarely helping (along with local
spring, sometimes hot, sometimes cold,) to rear
up an oasis of palms and tarfas, such as that of
Feiran hard by Mount Serbal, whose praises SO
many travellers have sung and as many more are
likely to sing again For, by all accounts, it is
quite gem of desert yerdure-a genuine " Pal
myra," though without a city and without a
queen.
The rain meant for Egypt seems to swept aside
from that level region by the stormy west wind;
and attacted by the mountains of the Peninsula,
it turns aside and pours itself down in water
spouts upon the Sinaitic wastes But it comes
in such rushes that it brings no blessings to the
soil, and is so unequally distributed, as to time
that even the spring gets no refreshment from
the winter floods; nay, hardly can remember
that they have been. If the traveller is bold
enough to penetrate the Peninsula during the
summer months-from April to Augustine may
with certainty count upon rainless Skies and
he may pitch his tent anywhere, even in she low
bed of the torrent nor will he find drier or
safer place of encampment than any one of the
hundred sarfa-groves in the bed of el-Arish.
But if he is bent on winter tour, Or travels
even so early as January Or February, he must
be on the lookout, not for showers merely but
for foods He dare not choose for his encamp-
ment that sandy hollow where the tarfa and the
rittem are 50 invtingly waving; for though it
should be in Wady Taiybeh, " the good, y or in
Wady el-Markhah, the valley of rest" hewill
find himself reckoning without his host. If the
wind shift to the west, bright as the sunset might
be over the blue Of Bahr Suweis or above the
brow of Abu Deraj beyond, he may find himself,
tent, turbans, baggage, provisions, camels, fowls
and all, hurrying down swollen river; which
ere the next evenings shadow have come down
upon these sands, will have passed into the sea,
or wholly vanished in the thirsty porous ground,
leaving no trace of its exuberant flow save a few
pools in the deeper hollows, or few drops in
hole of your fiat stone which the thirsty Arab or
his camel stoops to drink up.-North British
Reuiev