Series 03: John Brady Nash letters, January 1914-December 1915 - Page 71
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[Page 71]
A most interesting piece of water are we on the bosom of this morning, or rather have been all the morning, the clock's hands now indicate 12-20 p.m. It is one of the regrets of my life that you had not opportunity to be here before you shut yourself up in a Convent.
This strip of sea and the red barren land on either side of it is so close to the home of the first people referred to in any history that to the thoughtful it commends itself for study, especially when as a man he has reached beyond the 50th year of life. Should I get safe back to Australia 'twill be my utmost endeavour to get enough money together wherewith to sen my Kafoline to see this & other parts of the world.
If we go no further back than the year 1491 B.C. we can note how then the Israelites, under Moses, set out from Rameses, (practically the present site of Cairo), where the Nile breaks up into the various channels by which it finds its way, to the and then found its way, to the Mediterranean, or Great Sea. And follow their route onwards, not through the land of the Philistines which lay between them and the promised land but along the devious roads mapped out by The Lord, "through the way of the wilderness of the Red Sea" – Exd. xiii-18. –, "going up by five in a rank (harnessed) out of Egypt the land of Egypt" – idem – reaching at "Etham the edge of the wilderness – idem 20 – The Lord led them "by day in a pillar of a cloud, and by night in a pillar of fire" – idem 21 –. They turned south at Baal-Zephon – idem xiv-2 – near the Sea. Under the same guidance "Moses stretched forth his hand over the sea" – xv-27 – and "the Children of Israel walked upon dry land in the midst of the waters; and the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand and on their left. – idem. 29. – And the waters returned, and covered the chariots, and the horse men, and all the host of Pharoah, that came into the sea after them; and