il,
a sword, and battle-axe like a warrior, and his long beard, which had
grown during his captivity, now flowed down over his breast. Uarda's
father often looked at him with admiration, and said:

"One might think the Mohar, with whom I often travelled these roads, had
risen from the dead. He looked like you, he spoke like you, he called
the men as you do, nay he sat as you do when the road was too bad for
his chariot,

[The Mohars used chariots in their journeys. This is positively
known from the papyrus Anastasi I. which vividly describes the
hardships experienced by a Mohar while travelling through Syria.]

and he got on horseback, and held the reins."

None of Pentaur's men, except his red-bearded friend, was more to him
than a mere hired servant, and he usually preferred to ride alone, apart
from the little troop, musing on the past--seldom on the future--and
generally observing all that lay on his way with a keen eye. They soon
reached Lebanon; between it and and Lebanon a road led through the great
Syrian valley. It rejoiced him to see with his own eyes the distant
shimmer of the white snow-capped peaks, of which he had often heard
warriors talk.

The country between the two mountain ranges was rich and fruitful, and
from the heights waterfalls and torrents rushed into the valley. Many
villages and towns lay on his road, but most of them had been damaged
in the war. The peasants had been robbed of their teams of cattle, the
flocks had been driven off from the shepherds, and when a vine-dresser,
who was training his vine saw the little troop approaching, he fled to
the ravines and forests.

The traces of the plough and the spade were everywhere visible, but the
fields were for the most part not sown; the young peasants were under
arms, the gardens and meadows were trodden down by soldiers, the houses
and cottages plundered and destroyed, or burnt. Everything bore the
trace of the devastation of the war, only the oak and cedar forests
lorded it proudly over the mountain-slopes, planes and locust-trees
grew in groves, and the gorges and rifts of the thinly-wooded limestone
hills, which bordered the fertile low-land, were filled with evergreen
brushwood.

At this time of year everything was moist and well-watered, and Pentaur
compared the country with Egypt, and observed how the same results were
attained here as there, but by different agencies. He remembered that
morning on Sinai, and said to him