give it such touching expression as this blistering, naked, treeless

land.

Here you do not stop just when you please, but when you can. We found

water, but no shade. We traveled on and found a tree at last, but no

water. We rested and lunched, and came on to this place, Ain Mellahah

(

the boys call it Baldwinsville.) It was a very short day's run, but the

dragoman does not want to go further, and has invented a plausible lie

about the country beyond this being infested by ferocious Arabs, who

would make sleeping in their midst a dangerous pastime. Well, they ought

to be dangerous. They carry a rusty old weather-beaten flint-lock gun,

with a barrel that is longer than themselves; it has no sights on it, it

will not carry farther than a brickbat, and is not half so certain. And

the great sash they wear in many a fold around their waists has two or

three absurd old horse-pistols in it that are rusty from eternal disuse

--weapons that would hang fire just about long enough for you to walk out

of range, and then burst and blow the Arab's head off. Exceedingly

dangerous these sons of the desert are.

It used to make my blood run cold to read Wm. C. Grimes' hairbreadth

escapes from Bedouins, but I think I could read them now without a

tremor. He never said he was attacked by Bedouins, I believe, or was

ever treated uncivilly, but then in about every other chapter he

discovered them approaching, any how, and he had a blood-curdling fashion

of working up the peril; and of wondering how his relations far away

would feel could they see their poor wandering boy, with his weary feet

547

The Innocents Abroad