13 TWO YEARS IN THE JUNGLE. 



SO very disagreeable to be heaved forward with a jerk, stopped 

 suddenly, and thus bent nearly double at every step. One's 

 stomach soon learns to accommodate itself to the circumstances, 

 and after half an hour or so one's lumbar vertebrae get into 

 pretty good working order. But when we fall far behind, which 

 we do quite often, then the Arab begins to run, the camel starts 

 to trot, and I drop all side issues to devote all my energies to the 

 task of holding myself together. 



We passed the limestone chffs and quarries of the Mokattem 

 Hills, wound along up a little valley for several miles, and tinally 

 turned off eastward into the desei't. The sui'face was very uneven, 

 and thickly strewn with black and porous fragmentary limestone, 

 which very closely resembled the pieces of lava we collected upon 

 the sides of Vesu\ius. About ten o'clock we reached the Petrified 

 Forest — a hilly, sandy desert, strewn with petrified tree-trunks 

 and countless fragments of wood. In many places we found trunks 

 twenty, thu'ty, and even forty feet in length, and often a foot and 

 a half in diameter. The large trunks were always broken in a 

 number of places, squarely, as if they had been sawn. A few 

 stood perpendicularly in the sand, with only their upper ends visi- 

 ble. Fragments of all sizes lay scattered thickly all about, show- 

 ing petrified knots, bark, decayed places, small branches, and 

 roots. 



What a grand picnic that was ! We gathered up petrified 

 wood, found a great number of fossil oyster-shells, similar to Os- 

 trea deltuidea, wandered about, and enjoyed ourselves generall3\ 

 It was a glorious day, and for once in Egypt we enjoyed peace, 

 balmy peace. It was free and roomy and quiet out there, for we 

 had a whole desert all to oiu-selves. At noon we sat down upon a 

 little sand hill, just at the edge of a great sandy basin that was 

 once a lake, to rest and enjoy our luncheon. A cloth was spread 

 upon the clean brown sand, and from the lunch-basket Mahomet 

 produced two bottles of claret and one of water, oranges, dates, 

 sandwiches, and other substantials. 



Why do not more artists paint such glorious pictures as the 

 one that lay before us then, instead of the tame and hackneyed 

 scenes of lakelet, meadow, hill and dale so universally depicted? 

 On either hand the view was bounded by lofty sand ridges, or 

 limestone cliffs, but before us stretched the warm brown desert in 

 gently rolling hills of sand, sloping gradually down toward the 

 Nile. Cairo lay half hidden behind the Mokattem Hills, its grace- 



