The Flesh Is Excellent, And Has Nearly The Same Flavour As That Of
The Deer.
The Bedouins make waterbags of their skins, and rings of their
horns, which they wear on their thumbs.
When the Beden is met with in
the plains the
[p.572] dogs of the hunters easily catch him; but they cannot come up
with him among the rocks, where he can make leaps of twenty feet.
The stout Bedouin youths are all hunters, and excellent marksmen; they
hold it a great honour to bring game to their tents, in proof of their
being hardy mountain runners, and good shots; and the epithet Bowardy
yknos es-szeyd [Arabic], “a marksman who hunts the game,” is one of the
most flattering that can be bestowed upon them. It appears, from an
ancient picture preserved in the convent, which represents the arrival
of an archbishop from Egypt, as well as from one of the written
documents in the archives, that in the sixteenth century all the Arabs
were armed with bows and arrows as well as with matchlocks; at present
the former are no longer known, but almost every tent has its matchlock,
which the men use with great address, notwithstanding its bad condition.
I believe bows are no longer used as regular weapons by the Bedouins in
any part of Arabia.
After a very slow ascent of two hours we reached the top of Mount St.
Catherine, which, like the mountain of Moses, terminates in a sharp
point; its highest part consists of a single immense block of granite,
whose surface is so smooth, that it is very difficult to ascend it.
Luxuriant vegetation reaches up to this rock, and the side of the
mountain presented a verdure which, had it been of turf instead of
shrubs and herbs, would have completed the resemblance between this
mountain and some of the Alpine summits. There is nothing on the summit
of the rock to attract attention, except a small church or chapel,
hardly high enough within to allow a person to stand upright, and badly
built of loose uncemented stones; the floor is the bare rock, in which,
solid as it is, the body of St. Catherine is believed to have been
miraculously buried by angels, after her martyrdom at Alexandria. I saw
inscribed here
[p.573] the names of several European travellers, and among others that
of the unfortunate M. Boutin, a French officer of engineers, who passed
here in 1811.[M. Boutin came to Egypt from Zante; he first made a
journey to the cataracts of Assouan, and then went to Bosseir, where he
hired a ship for Mokha, but on reaching Yembo, Tousoun Pasha, the son of
Mohammed Ali, would not permit him to proceed, he therefore returned to
Suez, after visiting the convent of Sinai, and its neighbouring
mountains. After his return to Cairo, he went to Siwah, to examine the
remains of the temple of Jupiter Ammon, carrying with him a small boat
built at Cairo, for the purpose of exploring the lake and the island in
it, mentioned by Browne.
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