WADY OSH.
485
Ferash,” i. e. “ the meat for the apartment of the women ;” and a
part of it is then either set aside, or he is answered that this has been
already done. In the evening we joined in some of the popular
songs, of which a description will be found in my illustration of
Bedouin manners.
I was naturally asked for what object I had come to these mountains. -
As the passage of Greeks on their way to visit the convent
of Sinai is frequent, I might have answered that I was a Greek ;
but I thought it better to adhere to what I had already told my
guides, that I had left Cairo, in order not to expose myself to the
plague, that I wished to pass my time among the Bedouins while
the disease prevailed, and that I intended to visit the convent.
Other Moslems would have considered it impious to fly from the
infection ; but I knew that all these Bedouins entertain as great a
dread of the plague as Europeans themselves. During the spring,
when the disease usually prevails in Egypt, no prospect of gain can
induce them to expose themselves to infection, by a journey to the
banks of the Nile ; the Bedouins with whom I left Cairo were the
last who had remained there. Had the Pasha granted me a Firmahn
to the great Sheikh of the Towara Arabs, I should have gone directly ¬
to his tent, and in virtue of it I should have taken guides to
conduct me to Akaba; but being without the Firmahn, 1 thought
it more prudent to visit the convent in the first instance, and to
depart from thence for Akaba, in order to take advantage of such
influence as the Prior might possess over the Bedouins, for though
they pay little respect to the priests, yet they have some fear of
being excluded from the gains accruing from the transport of
visitors to the convent. As every white-skinned person, who
makes his appearance in the desert, is supposed by the Arabs to
be attached to the Turkish army, or the government of Cairo, my
* This will form part of a subsequent volume. Ed.
