80 MEMOIR OF BURCKHARDT. 



reduced from two yards to a span ; for I had been 

 obliged to cut off from it as much as would make 

 two pipes for my friends at Kerek ; and the last 

 article of my luggage a pocket handkerchief had 

 fallen to the lot of the sheikh of Eldjy at Wadi 

 Mousa." Having nothing left to excite cupidity, 

 he expected to be freed from all further demands ; 

 but in this he was mistaken ; as some of the Arab 

 ladies took a fancy to the few linen rags (torn from 

 his shirt) that were bound round his ankles, which 

 had been wounded by the stirrups : they begged so 

 hard to have them for making a borkoa or face- veil, 

 that he was compelled to yield to their impor- 

 tunities. 



Their route lay across the desert of El Ty, to the 

 northward of Mount Sinai, in which, according both 

 to the Jewish and Mahommedan tradition, the chil- 

 dren of Israel wandered for several years, and from 

 which belief the desert takes its name. Burckhardt 

 describes it as the most barren and horrid tract of 

 country he had ever seen. Black flints cover the 

 chalky or sandy ground, which in most places is 

 without any vegetation. The talh and the tamarisk 

 grow here and there, but the hungry camels are 

 obliged in the evening to wander whole hours out 

 of the road in order to find withered shrubs, on 

 which they feed. During ten days they only met 

 with four springs or wells, three of which were 

 brackish or sulphureous. They passed a little to 

 the northward of Suez, and arrived at Cairo (Sep- 

 tember 4) by the pilgrim road. 



