now I felt the force of Warburton's remark, when
he calls it the greatest wonder in the world. But in the midst of
these common-place reflections, a fit of sickness came over me.
Everything turned dark before me; and now for a moment my courage
failed me; and when looking at my three savage companions--for my
guide and his friend were sitting below finishing the fragments of my
breakfast, and the donkeys were munching beans--I felt myself alike
destitute of comfort and protection; and when they put forth their
hands to lift my body, I verily thought myself a murdered man. When I
came out of my faint, I found that they had gently turned me on my
belly, with my head flat upon the rock, and that they had been
sprinkling my face and breast with water. A profuse perspiration broke
out, and I felt myself relieved. I rested ten or fifteen minutes, and
hesitated for a moment whether to go up or down; but I had determined
that I should reach the top, if I should perish in the attempt. I
resumed, therefore, the ascent, but with more time and caution than
before; and fearing to look either up or down, or to any portion of
the frightful aspect around, I fixed my eye entirely on each
individual step before me, as if there had been no other object in the
world besides. To encourage me by diverting my attention, the Arabs
chanted their monotonous songs, mainly in their own language,
interspersed with expressions about buckshish, "Englese good to
Arabs," and making signs to me every now and then how near we were
getting to the top. After a second _dwam_, a rest and a draught of
water prepared me for another effort at ascending; and now, as I
advanced, my ideas began to expand to something commensurate with the
grandeur and novelty of the scene. When I reached the top, I found
myself on a broad area of about ten yards in every way of massive
stone-blocks broken and displaced. Exhausted and overheated, I laid me
down, panting like a greyhound after a severe chase. I bathed my
temples, and drank a deep, cool draught of Nile water. After inhaling
for a few minutes the fresh, elastic breeze blowing up the river, I
felt that I was myself again. I rose, and gazed with avidity in fixed
silence, north and south, east and west. And now I felt it very
exhilarating to the spirit, when thus standing on a small, unprotected
pavement so many hundred feet above the earth, and so many thousand
miles from home, to be alone, surrounded only by three wild