The Lands of the Bible Author:John Wilson Subtitle: Visited and Described in an Extensive Journey Undertaken With Special Reference to the Promotion of Biblical Research and the Advancement of the Cause of Philanthropy General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1847 Original Publisher: William Whyte Subjects: Palestine Middle East History / Middle East / G... more »eneral Religion / Biblical Commentary / General Religion / Theology Travel / Middle East / General Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: Badawi of the Alelkat. CHAPTER V. JOURNEY FROM CAIRO TO THE RED SEA BY THE DERB EL-BASATIN, AND THE " VALLEY OF THE WANDERINGS." I Shall not trouble my readers with many petty details connected with the preparations for our journey through the great desert to Horeb, the " Mount of God," and the lands of Esau and Jacob. With the advice of Mr. Lieder we engaged Mateir, the Sheikh of the Meikat branch of the Tawarah Arabs -- the same tribe, by the way, that furnished a guide to Niebuhr during his wanderings in Arabia Petrsea -- to act as our conductor to Mount Sinai, and to furnish camels for the conveyance of ourselves, our servants, and our provisions, and PREPARATIONS FOR JOURNEY THROUGH THE DESERT. 107 luggage. For each camel he was to receive two hundred and twenty piastres, a sum considerably larger than what he would have demanded of us, had we been able to inform him that we should allow him to take us thither by the shortest route. He was bound over at the English consulate, to serve us faithfully, and to do his best for our safe conveyance, by a document regularly written out, and sealed, and to which he appended his mark -- for, in common with all the Badawin of the Mount Sinai peninsula, he was unable to write -- but, f...« less