ant each foot deep as the
root of a date-tree?"

"Thou speakest rightly, Saracen," said the Christian knight, not
delighted at the tone with which the infidel criticized his favourite
steed--"rightly, according to thy knowledge and observation. But my good
horse hath ere now borne me, in mine own land, over as wide a lake as
thou seest yonder spread out behind us, yet not wet one hair above his
hoof."

The Saracen looked at him with as much surprise as his manners permitted
him to testify, which was only expressed by a slight approach to a
disdainful smile, that hardly curled perceptibly the broad, thick
moustache which enveloped his upper lip.

"It is justly spoken," he said, instantly composing himself to his usual
serene gravity; "List to a Frank, and hear a fable."

"Thou art not courteous, misbeliever," replied the Crusader, "to doubt
the word of a dubbed knight; and were it not that thou speakest in
ignorance, and not in malice, our truce had its ending ere it is well
begun. Thinkest thou I tell thee an untruth when I say that I, one of
five hundred horsemen, armed in complete mail, have ridden--ay, and
ridden for miles, upon water as solid as the crystal, and ten times less
brittle?"

"What wouldst thou tell me?" answered the Moslem. "Yonder inland sea
thou dost point at is peculiar in this, that, by the especial curse of
God, it suffereth nothing to sink in its waves, but wafts them away, and
casts them on its margin; but neither the Dead Sea, nor any of the
seven oceans which environ the earth, will endure on their surface the
pressure of a horse's foot, more than the Red Sea endured to sustain the
advance of Pharaoh and his host."

"You speak truth after your knowledge, Saracen," said the Christian
knight; "and yet, trust me, I fable not, according to mine. Heat, in
this climate, converts the soil into something almost as unstable
as water; and in my land cold often converts the water itself into
a substance as hard as rock. Let us speak of this no longer, for
the thoughts of the calm, clear, blue refulgence of a winter's lake,
glimmering to stars and moonbeam, aggravate the horrors of this fiery
desert, where, methinks, the very air which we breathe is like the
vapour of a fiery furnace seven times heated."

The Saracen looked on him with some attention, as if to discover in
what sense he was to understand words which, to him, must have appeared
either to contain something of mystery or of imposition