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SIN AT. 27
And it was so ; the vein was found at last and the mine yielded well. When I came to this
land aided by the king's genii I began to labour strenuously. The troops came and entirely
occupied it, so that none escaped therefrom. My face grew not frightened at the work,
I toiled cheerfully. I brought abundance, yea, abundance of turquoise, and obtained yet more
by my search. I did not miss a single vein."- Is it not strange to read such a record referring
to a time about four thousand years distant from us ? There is another inscription given also
by Professor Palmer, which may, perhaps, date from 3766 b.c. It runs thus : " I came to the
mines of my lord. I commenced working the mafka (turquoise) at the rate of fifteen men
daily. Never was like done in the reign of Senoferu the Justified."
But we have to retrace our steps in order to follow the lower route by Wady Taiyebeh.
Possibly we may startle in these mountains a herd of gazelles, and our Arabs may get a shot.
In "Eothen" (page 308, chap, xxiii.) the Arabs surprise in her sleep a young gazelle, and take
the darling prisoner. "I carried her," the description runs, "before me on my camel for the
rest of the day and kept her in my tent all night; I did all I could to gain her affections, but
the trembling beauty refused to touch food and would not be comforted. Whenever she had a
seeming opportunity of escaping she struggled with a violence so painfully disproportioned to
her fine delicate limbs that I could not go on with the cruel attempt to make her my own. In
the morning, therefore, I set her loose, anticipating some pleasure from the joyous bound with
which, as I thought, she would return to her native freedom. She had been so stupefied,
however, by the exciting events of the preceding day and night, and was so puzzled as to the
road she should take, that she went off very deliberately and with an uncertain step. She was
quite sound in limb, but she looked so idiotic that I fancied her intellect might have been really
upset. Never, in all likelihood, had she seen the form of a human being until the dreadful
moment when she woke from her sleep and found herself in the gripe of an Arab. Then her
pitching and tossing journey on the back of a camel, and lastly a soiree with me by candlelight.
I should have been glad to know, if I could, that her heart was not broken!"—The gazelle is
called "roe and roebuck in our version of the Bible. It was reckoned among the clean animals
of the law and was held in high esteem, Solomon's table being specially furnished with it
(1 Kings iv. 23). Swift, graceful, gentle, timid, these are the characteristics of the pretty
little animal. You see them often in small herds, but Canon Tristram mentions herds of one
hundred in number. As to their swiftness, Asahel, Joab's brother, whom Abner slew at last in
self-defence, is said (2 Samuel ii. 18) to have been " light of foot as a wild roe" {i.e. gazelle),
while amongst the mighty men who flocked to David in the wilderness the Danites are described
(1 Chronicles xii. 8) as " men of might, and men of war fit for the battle, that could handle
shield and buckler, whose faces were like the faces of lions, and were as swift as the roes
[gazelles] upon the mountains." As to their timidity, it supplies a metaphor to the great prophet
describing man's fear in the day of the Lord, when (Isaiah xiii. 13, 14) He "will shake the
heavens, and the earth shall remove out of her place, in the wrath of the Lord of Hosts, and in
the day of His fierce anger; And it shall be as (with) the chased roe [gazelle] and as (with) a |
