The Wanderer in Syria (Paperback)

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: CHAPTER II. DEPARTURE. The camels lay patiently under the trees before the door, quietly ruminating. Our caravan consisted of seven, four of which had been loaded and sent forward with their drivers, and were to halt at a village beyond the city, the other three awaited the pleasure of the Howadji and the Commander. If the mystery of the desert had inspired any terror in our minds, surely the Commander presented at that moment ample consolation. For several days before our departure, the astute Mohammad had indulged in stories of desert dangers, and when he conceived that our minds were sufficiently exercised, he began his overtures for the purchase of swords, guns, pistols, and weapons of all kinds and calibres, to secure us against the perils of the wilderness. The Pacha had broughta gun from Malta, and Nero had bequeathed me a pie-knife, of goodly strength and size, which had done admirable execution upon the pigeon-pasties of the Nile, for which the gun had furnished the material. This was the sum of our arsenal, and in consideration of the fact that we should hardly be attacked by any force whose numbers would not insure victory, it seemed useless to provide more. But the alarmed Commander having testified that there was but one God and that Mohammed was his Prophet, farther testified that one gun and a pie-knife were flagrantly insufficient against the Bedoueen of the desert. The Howadji therefore yielded, and the Commander having increased rny store by a pair of English pocket-pistols, gave me a bag of bullets, which I placed at the bottom of my portmanteau, and a box of percussion-caps, which I requested him to carry. So we descended, armed for the desert. The Pacha carried his gun, and I was girded over the shoulder with a strap holding the pistols...