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[Page 31]
gay pigments at home. Approach nature with a simple palette but an extravagant love of form. The sand hills take on shapes and curves, cuts, concave and convex, interwoven in an entrancing pattern, here rhythmical, there jagged and eccentrically opposed. With all the knowledge the artist may, nay must, bring to bear, he need only copy and he achieves art – but it takes doing.
Reluctantly leaving the delights of the desert and touching lightly on the one clean, though ancient, town of El Arish, where I was sumptuously entertained by the Colonel and Officers of the 1st Battalion of the British West Indies Regiment, I must speak a little about Magdhaba and my journeying to that battle ground.
The journey from El Arish to Magdhaba is a matter of some 25 miles and camels and attendants were provided by the British Governor or Administrator of Northern Sinai, a delightful and capable soldier, under whose rule El Arish became clean and prosperous. On the eve of our journey we made merry to some tune, swapping yarns with our hosts and partaking liberally of the unwonted but excellent refreshment more than generously provided by them, and it was with some misgivings that I faced the journey next morning in the full blaze of the sun and shifting heat; but my early training as a horseman in Australia and my experience of celebrations at the Chelsea Arts Club stood me in good stead and I arrived the same evening at Magdhaba fit and full of enthusiasm for work. My guide officer, a major of one of the Light Horse