Visits to monasteries in the Levant . Every now and then, it seems, when they have got intheir harvest, they assemble to have a fight. Several,are wounded, and sometimes a few are killed; in whichcase, if the numbers of the slain are not equal, the feudcontinues; and so it goes on from generation to gene-ration, like a faction fight in Ireland, or the feudal warsof the barons of the middle ages,—a style of thingswhich appears to belong to the nature of the humanrace, and not to any particular country, age, or from this warlike band with mutual compli-ments and good wishes, and ou
Visits to monasteries in the Levant . Every now and then, it seems, when they have got intheir harvest, they assemble to have a fight. Several,are wounded, and sometimes a few are killed; in whichcase, if the numbers of the slain are not equal, the feudcontinues; and so it goes on from generation to gene-ration, like a faction fight in Ireland, or the feudal warsof the barons of the middle ages,—a style of thingswhich appears to belong to the nature of the humanrace, and not to any particular country, age, or from this warlike band with mutual compli-ments and good wishes, and our guides each seizingthe tail of one of our donkeys to increase his onwardspeed, we trotted away back to the boat, which waswaiting for us at Souhag. There we found our boat-men and a crowd of villagers, listening to one of thoselong stories with which the inhabitants of Egypt arewont to enliven their hours of inactivity. This is anamusement peculiar to the East, and it is one in whichI took great delight during many a long journey. MENDICANT DEBVISH. Chap. XI. LEGENDS OF THE DESERT. 139 through the deserts on the way to Mount Sinai, Syria,and other places. The Arabs are great tellers ofstories; and some of them have a peculiar knack inrendering them interesting and exciting the curiosityof their audience. Many of these stories were inte-resting from their reference to persons and occurrencesof Holy Writ, particularly of the Old are many legends of the patriarch Abrahamand his beautiful wife Sarah, who, excepting Eve, issaid to have been the fairest of all the daughters of theearth. King Solomon is the hero of numerous strangelegends ; and his adventures with the gnomes and geniiwho were subjected to his sway are endless. The poemof Yousef and Zuleica is well known in Europe. Andthe traditions relating to the prophet Moses are sonumerous, that, with the help of a very curious manu-script of an apocryphal book ascribed to the gi-eatleader of the Jews, I have be
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