ABSTRACT
THE conditions of travelling and of working in Sinai are very different from those of life in a fertile country such as Egypt, and are still further from the ways of any European land. In Egypt most long distances can be traversed on the railway, and to go a few miles from a station means only an hour or two of donkey ride; whereas in Sinai the tedious camel is the only vehicle, and you may well spend six days on a distance which would be crossed in two or three hours in a train. In Egypt there is always water of some quality near at hand~ and it only needs boiling before use; in Sinai the water sources are a day's journey apart, and you may be glad to be within such a distance that a camel can go to the water and back in the day. The beginning is the worst of all, for on the road down is the serious bar of three days without water. In Egypt the rich fertility of the land provides an abundance everywhere; excellent birds, fish, good native bread, eggs, milk, and vegetables are almost always to be had. But in Sinai grim nature gives you the stone and the serpent instead of the bread and the fish, and the utmost that can be obtained from the desert valleys is an occasional tough sheep or goat.
