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country soon joined the party for safety, so that, on the first day after leaving Suez, they found themselves four hundred camels strong.

The Holy Land was anciently known by the names both of Palestine and Judea, and measures about one hundred and fifty miles in length and eighty in breadth. On the north it is bounded by Mount Libanus, which separates it from that part of Asia called Phoenicia ; on the east by Mount Hermon, which divides it from the deserts of Arabia; on the south by Stony Arabia, and on the west by the Medi

terranean.

Our travellers had at first a great wish to visit Mount Sinai, which, it is interesting to remark, is known amongst the Arabs by the name of Moses' Mount; but when they considered the dangers to which they would be exposed on the road, unless they could secure the friendship of the three wandering hordes which infest the road, plundering all travellers who are not strong enough to defend themselves; and found, that in all probability on their arrival there, the Monks, who occupy a monastery built on the declivity, would be afraid even to open their gate, and must therefore draw them up in a bucket by a cord and pulley to the height of thirty feet, they had determined to give up their design, and direct their attention rather to the arrangements necessary for the journey to Jerusalem,

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It is unnecessary to give a detailed account of their journey from day to day. Their road at first lay through the upper part of the desert which stretches from the eastern side of the red sea, to the borders of the Holy Land. This was the scene of those wanderings of the children of Israel under the command of Moses, when the Almighty, on account of their wickedness, barred their entrance into the land of promise. To this desert, numerous were the allusions which Captain Blisset found scattered through the sacred writings, and indeed what he passed through, though but the skirts of it, corresponded to the description given of it, by Jeremiah, 11th Chap. 6th verse, a land of deserts and of pits, a lund of drought and of the shadow of death, a land that no man passed through and where no man dwelt." In this our climate, surrounded as we are by perpetual ver. dure, and with every object that can delight the eye, we can scarcely conceive the horrors encountered by travellers, when crossing. the trackless sands, and exposed to all the ardour of a vertical sun. We shall quote a recent traveller, whose journey through this coun try Captain Blisset consulted, in order that the reader may the better comprehend those suffer. ings of the Israelites in their journey through the desert, and which the Bible so emphatically describes by the words, hungry and thirsty,

their souls fainted in them, which caused their frequent murmurings.

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It is difficult, he says, to form a correct idea of a desert, without having been in one. is an endless plain of sand and stones, sometimes intermixed with mountains of all sizes and heights, without roads or shelter, or any sort of produce for food, the few scattered trees and shrubs of thorns, that only appear when the rainy season leaves some moisture, barely serving to feed wild animals and a few birds. Every thing is left to nature. The wandering inhabitants do not care to cultivate even their few plants, and when there is no more of them in one place they go to another. When those trees become old and lose their vegetation, the sun which constantly beams upon them, burns, and reduces them to ashes. The other smaller plants have no sooner risen out of the earth, than they are dried up, and all take the colour of straw.

Generally speaking, in a desert there are a few springs of water, some of them at the distance of four, six, and eight days journey from one another, and not all of sweet water, on the contrary, it is generally salt or bitter, so that if the thirsty traveller drinks of it, it encreases his thirst and he suffers more than before. But when the calamity happens, that the next well which is so anxiously sought for is found dry,

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the misery of such a situation cannot be well described. The camels which afford the only means of escape, are so thirsty that they cannot proceed to another well, and if the travellers kill them for the sake of the little water that remains in their stomachs, they themselves cannot advance any farther. Their situation is dreadful and admits of no resource. Many perish victims of the most devouring thirst.” It is then that the value of a cup of water is really felt. He that has a jar of it is the richest of all. In such a case there is no distinction. If the master has none,. the servant will not give it to him, for very few are the instances when a man voluntarily loses his life, to save that of another, particularly in a caravan in the desert, where people are strangers to each other, What a situation for a man, though a rich one, perhaps the owner of all the caravans, he is dying for a cup of water —no one gives it to him -he offers all he possesses-no one hears him-they are all dying-though by walking a few hours farther they might be saved. the camels are lying down and cannot be made to rise, their owners perish, for no one has strength to walk-only he that has a glass of that precious liquor lives to walk a mile further, and perhaps dies too. If the voyages on seas are dangerous, so are those in the deserts. At sea, the provision very often fails; in the desert it is worse: at sea, storms

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are met with; in the desert there cannot be a greater storm than to find a dry well-at sea one meets with pirates, we escape, we surrender, or we die; in the desert they rob the traveller of all his property, they let him live perhaps, but what a life! to die the most agonizing death. In short, to be - thirsty in a desert without water, exposed to the burning sun without shelter, and NO HOPES of finding either, is the most terrible situation that a man can be placed in, and one of the greatest sufferings that a human being can sustain; the eyes grow inflamed, the tongue and lips swell; a hollow sound is heard in the ears, which brings on deafness, and the brain appears to grow thick and inflamed. All these feelings arise from want of a little water. In the midst of all this misery, the traveller is sometimes suddenly surprised with the appearance of water before him. A still lake rises before him so unmoved by the wind that every thing above is seen most distinctly reflected by itIf he has never heard of this delusive appear. ance before he hastens his pace to reach it sooner; the more he advances towards it, the more it retires from him, till at last it vanishes entirely, and he is left wondering and asking those about him, where is the water he saw at no great distance. He can scarcely believe that he was so deceived, he protests that he saw the waves running before the wind, and the reflec

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