A pilgrimage to the temples and tombs of Egypt, Nubia, and ...

36 FIRST IMPRESSIONS.
them by their drivers, they woukl not get up
they had been overloaded, or badly loaded, and
refused to rise until their burthens should be
more equitably disposed of; and this, their firm
determination, they conveyed to their task-
masters by sounds and gestures not to be mis-
understood. It was evident from the various
intonations of the cries they uttered, beginning
with a low plaintive grumble and ending in an
angry growl, that they had commenced by pity-
ing themselves for being overtasked, that they
then remonstrated against the injustice of the
blows that were inflicted upon them, and ended
by angrily defying their tyrants to make them
move ! And they were right, the sagacious
brutes !
—
for the men, finding that violent measures
availed them nothing in such a dispute, decided
upon lightening their loads ; and no sooner was
that done than the camels arose and cheerfully
stalked away, turning their patient heads from
side to side, and meekly looking down with half-
closed eyes upon their drivers, as though they
had never been at issue with them. Here a
group of old Arabs in huge white turbans,
squatted under a wall, were waving their fly-flap-
pers over the heaps of flat cakes of bread and ripe
dates that were spread upon the ground before