MY QUEST OF THE ARAB HORSE 



person has drank a sup from the same glass. 

 We sometimes complain at hotels because the 

 sheets are not changed more than twice a week, 

 but all this bluff disappears quickly when we 

 have borne the hardships of the desert in the 

 summer time. There we found ourselves shov- 

 ing a camel's head to one side so that we could 

 drink the riled muddy alkali water from a pool ; 

 we thought nothing of being the last, after 

 twenty Bedouins had drunk out of a wooden 

 bowl of sour milk. After you have eaten two 

 weeks with your hands, knives and forks seem 

 awkward. You can, in fact, pick out with 

 more accuracy and speed a choice piece of mut- 

 ton with your fingers than you can with a 

 spoon, and this means something when you are 

 squatting round a meal with thirty Bedouins 

 each with as long a reach as Fitzsimmons. 



We learned to ride all day in the heat and 

 perhaps part of the night and then be glad 

 to lie down in a Bedouin's bed a minute after 

 he had climbed out of it, and we ate with zest 

 from the same mound of rice as the rest of the 

 tribe. After all, the desert is the great leveler 

 and it shows us how trivial and artificial we 

 are in some ways in our civilized life. 



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