16 BEDOUINS AT A DESERT WELL. 



judge, as they have existed it may be for hundreds, 

 or even for thousands of years. 



Take for instance the case of those changeless eastern 

 races the Arabs. No great stretch of imagination is 

 required to conceive a caravan of these bronzed and 

 bearded children of the wilderness, arriving and pitch- 

 ing their camp upon the brink of some desert watering 

 place. The Arab patriarch, gazing down into its 

 pellucid depths, can see in his own figure, reflected 

 in its glassy surface, the stereotyped image of four 

 thousand years ago it might be of Abraham, as he 

 once stood, when he tended his flocks upon these plains 

 a pilgrim, a wanderer, and a dweller in tents, as he 

 and all his fathers were. 



Passing, however, from these nomadic tribes to the 

 consideration of the conditions of life as they still exist 

 amongst the dwellers in cities throughout a great part 

 of the semi-civilized communities, we shall find that it 

 corresponds in a great degree to life in a species of 

 permanent encampment. The unsettled state of society 

 generally causes the inhabitants to remain closely cooped 

 up within the boundaries of the town by night, from 

 whence they can daily sally forth in security to look 

 after their gardens or cultivated grounds in the vicinity. 

 This is so in more than one European country at the 

 present time; and in Eastern lands is generally the 

 normal state of affairs. 



When we pass beyond the limits of the town we 

 quickly find almost every trace of human occupation 

 cease, and thus we have brought home to our minds 

 the true significance of the expression so often used 

 in the New Testament, where the dwellers are repre- 

 sented as going forth from the great cities of Ancient 



