THE GROWTH OF EXPLANATORY TRANSFORMATION MYTHS

A few years since, Maxime Du Camp, an eminent member of the French Academy, travelling from the Red Sea to the Nile through the Desert of Kosseir, came to a barren slope covered with boulders, rounded and glossy.

His Mohammedan camel-driver accounted for them on this wise:

“Many years ago Hadji Abdul-Aziz, a sheik of the dervishes, was travelling on foot through this desert: it was summer: the sun was hot and the dust stifling; thirst parched his lips, fatigue weighed down his back, sweat dropped from his forehead, when looking up he saw—on this very spot—a garden beautifully green, full of fruit, and, in the midst of it, the gardener.

“ ‘O fellow-man,’ cried Hadji Abdul-Aziz, ‘in the name of Allah, clement and merciful, give me a melon and I will give you my prayers.’

“The gardener answered: ‘I care not for your prayers; give me money, and I will give you fruit.’

“ ‘But,’ said the dervish, ‘I am a beggar; I have never had money; I am thirsty and weary, and one of your melons is all that I need.’

“‘No,’ said the gardener; ‘go to the Nile and quench your thirst.’

“Thereupon the dervish, lifting his eyes toward heaven, made this prayer: ‘O Allah, thou who in the midst of the desert didst make the fountain of Zem-Zem spring forth to satisfy the thirst of Ismail, father of the faithful: wilt thou suffer one of thy creatures to perish thus of thirst and fatigue?’