The Sunday Oregonian., July 13, 1919, Section One, Page 7, Image 7

THE SUNDAY OREGOXIAN', PORTLAND, JULY 13, 1919.
CIEL JARS WRITER
TO PRIMITIVE
Shakes, at 5000 an Hour, Ban
isi Political Cares.
BIBLICAL EGYPT VISITED
William' T. Ellis Sajs Broadway
U old Pay Much to See Ample.
Valatlined Riders' Motions.
. Copyrlht. 1919. by the New Tork Herald
compujr all rights reserved. Copyrlsht.
Canada, br tba New Tork Herald company.
Published by arrangement.
BT WILLIAM T. ELLIS.
(Special Correspondent of the Herald.)
WILDERNESS OP MOUNT SINAI,
Egypt. This may not be any great
hakes of a story, but It Is a story of
great shakes. I have ridden hither on
a camel, and I now understand why
the Israelites murmured at Moses. To
take my mind off the sore place
never a g-ood location for one's mind I
have been making; some mathematical
calculations concerning: the number of
times my carcass has been shaken by
this ill-constructed beast which hides
Its ungainly and ill-mannered move
ments under the euphemism of "the
sbtD of the desert.
Before my eyes as I write. In proof
that the Journey Is over, rises Mount
fclnal Itself, where Moses received the
Ten Commandments, and since leaving
Tor. the nearest point of contact with
the civilised world, four days ago. I
have been shaken 125.000 times! The
return trip will be as bad. or worse,
making a total of a quarter of a million
shakes for the privilege of seeing our
troubled times from rtie standpoint of
Moses!
Casael Shake Are Calculated.
That sound like exaggeration, does
it not? Nevertheless. It Is as defin
itely a fact as the multiplication table.
Repeatedly, watch in hand, I have
counted the number of shakes per mtn
lite that a camel rider endures. They
range from S5. at a slow walk, to 165
when the beast Is trotting. The actual
riding time from Tor to Sinai Is 11H
hours, mostly at a walk. A little fig
urine will reveal how conservative 1
the calculation of a Quarter of a mil
lion shakes for the round trip. All
this that the bored newspaper reader,
glancing over his favorite daily, may
get the news from the ends of the
earth, wishing the while, perchance,
that he had as soft a snap as these
newspaper fellows! The dear reader is
buying a quarter of a million agita
tions of my mortal frame for 2 cents.
Being shaken by a camel is different
from being Jolted by a trotting horse.
or from the vibration of a poorly laid
railway. The camel has one more Joint
in each leg than the horse. His motion
at a distance appears gracefully un
dulatlng. Actually It sways the pas
Sanger to and fro from the hips, and
there is at first a Jar and a strain to it
that no Inexpertenoed rider would call
undulating. It is as If a giant had
gripped a man at the middle and shaken
him to and fro so that every atom of
the body is set to vibrating.
Shakes Reach 50UO aa Hoar.
In aristocratic gymnasiums there is
a machine called "the camel." which Is
supposed to simulate the motions of
this beast, and thereon middle-aged
gentlemen who hatte grown chesty
around the m-aistline ride for five
minutes of violent exercise with an at
tendant standing by! Imagine one such.
with ample dignity at the latitude of
his belt, mounted what prices Broad
way would pay for the spectacle of
his tumultuous mounting! aboard this
conglomeration of the fag ends of ani
mal creation, and under a tropical sun,
or in a smothering desert sand storm,
Traveling three m,ilea an hour for seven
hoars a day. at more than sooo shakes
an hour! Nevertheless, at the end of
the third day the victim would be able
to digest cobblestones.
The saddle of a camel is a concave
affair of two boards, with six Inches
of nothing In the middle and scalloped
on all the sides. A high pommel in
front and an equally high cantle be
hind are first aids to satrty In mount
ing and dismounting. As he rises or
descends brother camel mak-es three
separate and vigorous attempts to
throw his rider. The latter rides with
his legs over the front of the saddle,
astride the pommel, and his feet
crossed on the neck of the animal.
Vnless his saddle Is better padded than
any beginner's ever Is. he will . be
bruised black and blue at the small of
his back by the cantle of the aaddle:
the points of his pelvis will almost
puncture the flesh; his abdominal
muscles will be wrenched agonisingly
by the swaying to and fro: his shoulder
blades will be well-nigh torn off. and
ail his ribs will seem to separate from
that battered string of bones which h
used focdiy to thick was a firm spinal
column.
Then, as the crowning Insult to in-
Jury, at the close of the first days
torture a Beaoutn. to whom all foreign
ers are hakims, or physicians, comes to
the tent to ask for medicine for his
pains!
vVlldrraesa Ways Weary.
-Let Mm Jest at scars who never rode
a camel. And In a sand storm: Over
the wastes of the Slral desert "the
wilderness of sin." Muses called It
there sweep frequently, and for days
end. violent winds which carry the
sand and dust In thick clouds. The
blue waters of the Red sea on the left
are wiped out. The majestic Slnal
mountain range on the right disap
pears. Only the plodding figures of our
own caravan, heads wrapped and bent
to the storm, are In sight. Helmets
strsin at chin straps. Impalpable dust
fills eyes, nostrils, mouth. Tiny frag
ments of flint cut hands and face
(But life and travel consist in good
part of sheer endurance, so we plod
'on and on until the hour for making
I camp, when every morsel we eat and
every object we touch is powdered with
the all-pervasive sand.
We have a tent; there are three of
us two Herald men and Professor C.
P. Russell of the American college at
Assiut. Egypt, who Is free to become
our Arabic tongue, since his students
are participating In the nation-wide
strike. Our cook. Mohammed, a Berber,
also has a tent, but our six soldier
guards, of the local Arab police, and
our nine camel men simply seek the
lee side of a bunch of camel thorn and.
about a quick burning fire of the same
material, sit and talk, or wrap them
selves up from head to foot, like
Egyptian mummies, and wait for the
order to move. Our 15 camels, hob
bled, wander about the desert eeeklng
food.
Nights are cold, biting cold, on the
desert, and the change from torrid
noonday heat to the chill of darkness
is so great that one wonders how the
thinly clad Arabs possibly stand it-
Somewhat similar Is the contrast as
we get into the mountains between
the desert glare and "the shadow of a
great rock in a weary land." I know
now where the psalmist got his figure.
More then once our noontide halt has
been In the covert of a huge bowlder,
with sand swirling about and the blis
tering heat lying just outside the
shadow line. A tree affords no such
shade as a rock.
How quickly a man In the desert re
verts to primitive cares. International
problems which a week before had en
grossed him slip out of mind, and his
concern is for the direction of the wind
and the intensity of the sun and the
chances of finding a good camping
place for the night. The state ef our
food and water supply is real conversa
tional material.
Casael Tick le Bloodthirsty.
Most poetry concerning the Bedouin
life was written by men beside cosy
library fires, who never made the
acquaintentnee of a blood-thirsty camel
tick, and It therefore nels revision.
Longfellow's lines:
"The cares that Infest the dsy,
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,
And aa silently steal away"
are a familiar case in point. The poet
never beard the Arabs break camp.
They do nothing in common without
an Immense amount of talk and con
troversy and screaming. No other
Orientals are so noisy. And to the high
pitched human altercations the roaring
of the disobliging camels, protesting
against their loads and against kneel
in? down or rising up. The early
morning rush of the New York sub
way Is serenity itself In comparison.
Talk turns to the distance to the
nearest water; and when, on the second
day. a fitful mountain rivulet Is met,
disappearing In the hot sand, and re
appearing aa suddenly, but nourishing
an occasional patch, of green or cluster
or palms the while. It Is enjoyed as
no creation of Broadway could be en
Joyed, with the sheer, simple native
delight of man back to nature. It
needs a stretch of desert to prepare
one for the real beauty of water or
plant life. The person who draws
water from a faucet, with no more
thought than he finds smooth pave
ments under his feet, has unap
preciated privilege's; but he also misses
the elemental Joys that Inspired the
great songs.
There Is to he more wilderness ways
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than the contemplation of one's camel
and the soreness causes. The beast
himself, with his lumpy, snake-like
neck, and moth-eaten patches of hair,
his tapir lips, and eyes that protrude
like those of a pop-eyed gold fish, with
the sunken spaces of a poison snake
behind them; and with his frayed ears
alongside of a small brain pan. is an
endless source of interest. Small won
der that he figures so largely in Arab
lore. He lives on what he can crop in
the desert; and, when trained to do so.
can travel days without water, carry
ing a load of 300 pounds. His normal
pace, at which movements of Asia have
gone, whether as migrations oi amines
ike that or ADranara, or ui nauona
ike that of the Israelites, is three miles
an hour, though a racing camei or
dromedary is capable of great ana
long-sustained speed.
The noon halt, wnen doiis are loos
ened and helmets laid aside and put-
tees and shoes removed, and when one
lies down at ease to relieve the strain
upon sore muscles, is a aengni mat
is a revision to the race's earliest safe
nerlences. After food how the epi-
curea of the American hotels and clubs
,-onld envy us the gustatory delights
of this simple repapt from tin cans!
it is a Joy beyond the cunning of stage
craft to supply to watch the sharp
movements of alert-eyed lizards; or to
study the cumbersome flights of heavy
winged grasshoppers; or to behold the
heat dancing upon the burning sands,
or the fleecy clouds sailing lightly
across rainless skies; or to contemplate
the majesty of the red and rugged
mountains of granite. These are the
rewards of desert ways, denied to the
man who lives ever within hail of a
taxicah and a policeman. What though
one wears his pistol ever In sight and
within reach: and his rifle hanging on
his saddle, the possibility of a life-and-
death brush with the Bedouin gives
one scarcely a thought; and at worst
It Is no such carking care as brings
weariness Into the eyes of the city man.
une aay, as we drew near to Sinai, we
made our noon halt in a garden; Moses
may easily have watered the flock of
his father-in-law Jethro by this very
well. From the time we left the out
Skirts of Tor until this fourth day of
the Journey we had not seen a single
human habitation. The black tents of
the Bedouins are pitched up in the side
wadye, or ravines. Twice we had met
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passing Arabs, when there were formal
and stately greetings between them
and our escort, with handclasps and
touching of foreheads together. This
garden showed human care. Fenced in
by stones, it occupied a third of an acre
or more. . In .addition to palm trees, it
contained pomegranates in all their red
glory of bloom; olives, almonds, apri
cots and grapes.
By contrast, I suppose. It recalled the
palm rooms and palm gardens of va
rious city, hotels back in America;
where everything, from the made-in-Kew
York palm leaves to the cbmplex
lon of the sophisticated women who sit
in their shade, spelled artificial and
perverted conception of luxury. Our
Arabs, who lie about In the shade, are
ragged and dirty and would not be ad
mitted to the back door of a respectable
American hotel. But one wonders if
they have not learned a secret of the
sands and , wilderness and the oasis
which our cumbered and over-civilized
times have missed. Perhaps we shall
learn from the Bedouin a lesson worth
every one of the quarter of a million
shakes that it cost to discover. But
that must remain lor a later article,
muscles are too sore to write more today.
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