A CHAT ABOUT PLANTS. 119 



him in his desert home, I had eaten his salt. He was a 

 Sheikh, and revered as a saint among his brethren. He 

 had now come with me from the far south, first my guide, 

 but now my friend and companion. Abu Abdallah was 

 his name; so I said, "Abu Abdallah, do you believe in 

 God ?" " Thou sayest it, oh brother !" was his quiet an- 

 swer. " But Abu Abdallah, I fear you do not believe 

 that your soul is immortal ;" for the old Arab, though my 

 friend for the while, was a sad thief, and when he swiftly 

 rode through the desert, there were voices heard, it was 

 said, mournful voices of men, who called for the sweet 

 life he had taken from them. He gazed at me for an 

 instant from the depth of that unfathomable eye, the pre- 

 cious heirloom of a son of the Orient, but vouchsafed not 

 a word. I was struck by his silence, and asked again. 

 " Oh brother, oh brother, thou wrongest me !" he said, and 

 quietly rising, he seized upon a little shapeless mass, that 

 lay half hid in the fragrant herbs at our feet, and gently 

 pushing it into the purling stream, he added : " Has not 

 the God of our fathers, whose prophet is Mahomet, given 

 us the Rose of Jericho 1 And does not my brother, who 

 reads the books of the wise men of the Franks, know that 

 the burning sands of the desert are its home, and that 

 it delights in the fiery winds of the west, which scatter 

 the caravan, and strew the sands of the Sahara with the 

 bones of the traveller ? There it grows and blossoms, and 

 our children love it. But the season comes again, and it 

 wjthers and dies. And the dread simoom rises, and seizes 

 the dry, shrivelled roots, that my brother beholds there, 

 and on the wings of the tempest the Rose of Jericho rides 



