UNCLE IN ENGLAND. 35 



bound up in the kneading cloths, and tied on 

 their shoulders. The Arabs have also, among 

 their travelling furniture, a round thick piece of 

 leather, \vhichtheylayon the ground, and which 

 serves them to eat upon ; round it there is a row 

 of rings, by which it is drawn together with a 

 chain : and it hangs by a hook at the end of the 

 chain to the side of the camel, in travelling. In 

 this leather, they carry their meal made into 

 dough ; and when the repast is over, they wrap 

 up in it all the fragments that remain." 



" I wonder/' said Frederick, who was looking 

 at the map, " I wonder, heavily laden as they 

 must have been, that they did not take the 

 shortest road to the promised land, instead of 

 going round about by the Red Sea." 



" The regular route to the promised land," my 

 uncle replied, " was certainly along the coast of 

 the Mediterranean, towards Gaza and the other 

 cities of Palestine, which were a portion of 

 Canaan, and at no great distance from the Lower 

 Egypt. But the way by which it was the divine 

 will to lead them, was through the Red Sea ; as 

 being not only impracticable for their return, but 

 being eminently calculated to impress them with 

 a sense of the miraculous power which guided 

 and protected them through the * deep.'" 



I asked my uncle then what was meant by the 

 word wilderness. He said, " The word occurs in 

 a great many places, both in the Old and New 



