200 I GO A-FISHING. 



med. He was above the average of Arabs in intellectual 

 ability, for he did a good deal of independent thinking on 

 his own account. You told me the same thing of him 

 once yourself, and I remember that you said he was the 

 only Bedouin you ever knew who had any religion which 

 could be called a part of him. It was true. He often 

 asked questions which were really quite surprising as in- 

 dications of the extent to which his reflections had carried 

 him. I always talked religion with him. During my last 

 journey as well as this we talked a great deal about 

 Mohammed and about the Christian faith. More I think 

 this time than before. 



" In the evenings, when the camp was pitched, the scene 

 around us was always exceedingly impressive. At such 

 times our Arabs gathered in a group close to the tent in 

 which our dinner-table was set, and listened, wondering, 

 to the fire of talk which we carried on in English or in 

 French, until the coffee came on, and our pipes were 

 alight. Then, in the fragrant air, we turned to our swarthy 

 followers, who lay on the sand outside, and one or another 

 would recount a story of the old times, a crusade legend, 

 or a history of love and war, which I would repeat to the 

 sons of the desert. You know how the love of story-list- 

 ening is one of the remarkable traits of Bedouin charac- 

 ter. But it is no common story that tickles their literary 

 palates. It must be garnished with abundance of rhetor- 

 ical figure, loaded with imagery, and sonorous with words. 

 Therefore more depends on the interpreter than on the 

 relater in such a case. 



"The Bible furnished material for many of these tales ; 

 and the stories of the patriarchs given in the Jewish ver- 

 sion of them differ so entirely from the Mohammedan ver- 

 sion, that they had to the listeners the freshness of new 



