WANDERINGS IN ARABIA WANDERINGS IN ARABIA BY CHARLES M. DOUGHTY BEING AN ABRIDGMENT OF -TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERTA" ARRANGED WITH INTRODUCTION BY EDWARD GARNETT IN TWO VOLUMES VOL. II. LONDON DUCKWORTH AND CO. 3 HENRIETTA STREET, W.C. 1908 CONTENTS CHAPTER I KHEYBAR "THE APOSTLE'S COUNTRY " The night at Kheybar. Abd el-Hady. Ahmed. The gunner's belt. Khey- bar by daylight. Medina soldiery. Muharram. Sirur. The Nasrany brought before the village governor. Amm Mohammed en-Nejumy. Amiin. The Gallas. E vening in the soldiers' kahwa. Ibrahim the kady. Hejaz Arabic. A worthy negro woman. Aram Mohammed's house. Wadies of Kheybar. The Albanians. The Nasruny accused. Friendship with Amm Mohammed. Our well labour. His hunting. Abdullah's letter to the Governor of Medina. Abdullah's tales. His tyranny at Kheybar. Sedition in the village. Abdullah's stewardship. Dakhil the post. Aly, the religious sheykh, an enemy to death. The Nejumy's warning to Abdullah, spoken in generous defence of the Nasrany. The ostrich both bird and camel. Amm Mohammed had saved other strangers Pp. 1-24 CHAPTER II THE MEDINA LIFE AT KHEYBAR Amm Mohammed's Kurdish family. His life from his youth. His son Haseyn. He is a chider at home. Ahmed. A black fox. The Nejumy a perfect marksman. His marvellous eye-sight. The ignorances of his youth. A brother slain. His burning heart to avenge him. A Beduin marksman slain, by his shot, in an expedition. A running battle. He is wounded. Dakhil returns not at his time. The Nasrany's life in doubt. Amm Mohammed's good and Abdullah's black heart, Dakhil arrives in the night. Atrocious words of Abdullah. " The Engleys are friends and not rebels to the Sooltan." Andalusia of the Arabs. An English letter to the Pasha of Medina. Abdullah's letter. Spitting of some account in their medicine .Pp. 25-37 vi CONTENTS CHAPTER III GALLA-LAND. MEDINA LOEE The Abyssinian Empire. Galla-land. Perpetual warfare of (heathen) Gallas and (Christian) Abyssinians. A renegade Frank or Traveller at Mecca and Medina. SAbia drink. A hospitable widow (at Tayif). "The Nasara are the Sea's offspring." Wady Bishy. Muharram's death. The Nasntny accused. Sale of Muharram's goods. Aly, the (deadly) enemy of the Nasrany. A Roman invasion of ancient Arabia. Aelius -Gallus sent by Augustus, with an army, to occupy the riches of A. Felix. The Halhal. The Hurda. The Kheyabara abstain from certain meats- Another Ageyly's death. — His grave * violated by the witches.' Pp. 38-51 CHAPTER IV DELIVERANCE FROM KHEYBAR Amm Mohammed's wild brother-in-law. The messenger arrives from Medina. The Nasrany procures that the water is increased at Kheybar. Ayn er-Reyih. A letter from the Pasha of Medina. Violence of Abdullah. Might one forsake the name of his religion, for a time ? Amm Mohammed would persuade the Nasrany to dwell with him at Kheybar. The Engleys in India. The Nasrany's Arabic books are stolen by a Turkish Colonel at Medina. Return of the camel-thief. The villagers of el-Hayat. Humanity loves not to be requited. Mutinous villagers beaten by Abdullah. Deyik es~ sudr. Departure from Kheybar. Hamed. Love and death. Amm Moham- med's farewell. Journey over the Harra. Come to Heteym tents. Habara fowl. Stormy March wind. The Hejjur mountains. Eagles. Meet with Heteym. ' The Nasara inhabit in a city closed with iron.' Solubbies from near Mecca. The rafiks seeking for water. Certain deep and steyned wells "were made by the Jan." Blustering March weather. The Harra craters. " God give that young man (Ibn Rashid) long life ! " Pp. 52-76 CHAPTER V DESERT JOURNEY TO HAYIL. THE NASRANY IS DRIVEN FROM THENCE Ey&da ibn Ajjiueyn, seen again. Uncivil Heteym hosts. Ghroceyb. Salih, again. Strife with the rafiks. A desolate night in the khala. ZOl Come to tents and good entertainment. A rautha in the desert. Hunter's CONTEN vn roast. Th« Tto, or phantom tbeltil in the SbermriU country. • person. Braitshan, a Sharmnar Shrykh. The lii>t, hamlet in .1. Sha: Another grange in the desert. 'lietueen the dog and the wolf. ' '1 he village el-Kasr. Tidings that the Emir is absent from Hayil. : Temtn. Hayil in sight. Gofar. Come to Hayil, the second time. Aneybar left deputy for Ibn Uashid in the town. The Nasn'my is received with ill-will and fanaticism. Aneybar is now an adversary. A Medina Sherif in Hayil. The townspeople's fanaticism in tin: morning ; a heavy hour. Depart, tin- second time, with trouble from Ilayil. Come again to Gofar. B. Tcmin and Shammar. ... Pp. 77-106 CHAPTER VI THE SHAMMAR AND HARB DESERTS IN NEJD Herding Supper of milk. A flight of cranes. An evil desert journey, and night, with treacherous rafiks. Aly of Gussa again. Braitsha"n's booths again. "Arabs love the smooth speaking." Another evil journey. A menzil of Heteym ; and parting from the treacherous rafiks. Nomad thirst for tobacco. A beautiful Heteym woman. Solubba. Maatukand Noweyr. " Nasara " passengers. Life of these Heteym. Burial of the Nasrany's books. Journey to the Harb, eastward. Gazelles. Camel- milk bitter of wormwood. Heteym menzils. Come to Harb Aarab. False rumour of a foray of the Wahaby. El-Auf. An Harb sheykh. An Harb bride. Mount again, and alight by night at tents. Motlog and Tollog. Come anew to Ibn Nabal's tent. Ibn Nahal, a merchant Beduin. His wealth. A rich man rides in a ghrazzu, to steal one camel ; and is slain. Tollog's inhospitable ferij. Wander to another menzil. "Poor Aly." An Ageyly descried. A new face. A tent of poor acquaintance. Pp. 107-135 CHAPTER VII JOURNEY TO EL-KASIM : BOREYDA Beduin carriers. Set out with Hained, a Shammary. . . Ayiin. <• Watchtowers. Bare hospitality in el-Kasim. The deep sand-land and its inhabitants. Aspect of Boreyda. The town. The Emir's hostel. The Nasrany is robbed in the court yard. Jeyber, the Emir's officer. The Kasr Hajellan. Abdullah, the Emir's brother. Boreyda citizens ; the best are camel masters iu the caravans. Old tragedies of the Emirs. Tho town. A troubled afternoon. Set out on the morrow for Am\/a. Pp. 13G-155 VOL. II. I vm CONTENTS CHAPTEK VIII ANEYZA The Nefud (of el-Kasim). Passage of the Wady er-Rummah. The Nasrany, forsaken by his rafik, finds hospitality ; and enters Aneyza. Aspect of the town. The Emir Zdtnil. His uncle Aly. The townspeople. Ab- dullah el-Khenntyny. His house and studies. Breakfast with Zamil. The Nasrany is put out of his doctor's shop by the Einir Aly. A Zelot. Dreakfast with el-Khenneyny. Eye diseases. Small-pox in the town. ' The streets of Aneyza. The homely and religious life of these citizens. Women are unseen. Abdullah el-Bessam. A dinner in his house. Nasir es-Smtry. The day in Aneyza. el-Khenneyny's plantation. Hamed es- Sdfy, Abdullah JBessam, the younger, and Sheykh Ibn Ayitli. An old Ateyba Sheykh : Zelotism. The infirm and destitute. The Nasrany 's friends . Pp. 156-182 CHAPTER IX LIFE IN ANEYZA Rumours of warfare. A savage tiding from the North. The Meteyr Aarab. The 'Ateyba. A Kahtany arrested in the street. A capital crime. Friday afternoon lecture. The Muttowwa. An inoculator and leech at Aneyza. The Nasrany without shelter. Arabian sale horses ; and the Northern or Gulf horses. El-'Eyarieh. The Wady er-Rummah north- ward. Khdlid bin WaMd. Owsbazieh. Deadly strife of well-diggers. Ancient man in Arabia. The Nasrany is an outlaw among them. Pp. 183-196 CHAPTER X THE CHRISTIAN STRANGER DRIVEN FROM ANEYZA ; AND RECALLED Yahya's homestead. Beduins from the North. Rainless years and murrain. Picking and stealing in Aneyza. Handicrafts. Hurly-burly of fanatic women and children against the Nasrany. Violence of the Emir Aly, who sends away the stranger by night. Night journey in the Nefud. The W. er-Rummah. Strife with the camel driver. Come to Khobra in the Nefud. The emir's kahwa. The emir's blind father. Armed riders of Boreyda. Medicine seekers. The town. An 'Aufy. The cameleer returns from Zamil ; to convey the stranger again to Aneyza ! Ride to CONTF^ ix •1-HeUtteb, Kl-r.ukn-ii-1.. Ildalid. oasis. Night journey in the Nefud. Alight ;i( an outlying plantation of Aneyza (appointed for the residence of the Nasrany). Visit of Abdullah el-Khenneyny. . Pp. 197-216 CHAPTER XI KAHTAN EXPELLED FROM EL-KASlM . Well-waters of Aneyza. Well-driving and irrigation. Evenings in the orchard. The kinds of palms. Locusts. The Bosra caravan arrives. Violence of Ibrahim. Rasheyd visits his jeneyny. The hareem. The small-pox. Bereaved households. The Meteyr Aarab gather to Aneyza. Warfare of the town, with the Meteyr, against the (intruded) Kahtan. Morning onset of Meteyr. Zamil approaches. Final overthrow and flight of the Kahatin. Hayzsin is slain. Tie Kahtan camp in the power of Meteyr. A Moghrebby enthralled among those Kahtan is set free. The Meteyr and the town return from the field. Beduin wives wailing for their dead. 'When the Messiah comes will he bid us believe in Mohammed ? ' The great sheykh of the Meteyr. The departure of the Mecca caravan is at hand. Hamed el- Yah} a. The Nasrany removes to the Khenneyny's palm-ground Pp. 217-236 CHAPTER XII SET OUT FROM EL-KASIM, WITH THE BUTTER CARAVAN FOR MECCA Abdullah el-Khenneyny ; — a last farewell. Sleyman, a merchant-carrier in the kafily. The camp at 'Auhelh\n. The Emir d-kdfily. The setting out. Noon halt. Afternoon march. The evening station. Er-Russ. The Aban mountains. Ibrahim, the emir. Simum wind. The last desert villages. A watering. Beduin Rafiks. Arc not these deserts watered by the monsoon rains ? An alarm. Caravaners and Beduins. The landscape seyls to the W. er-Rummab. Camels and cameleers. 'Afif, a well-station. Signs of hunters. Caravan paths to Mecca. Wady Jerrtr. Mountain landmarks, Thiilm and Edhl. Water tasting of alum. The Harrat d-Kisshub. Thirst in the caravan. Sley man's opinion of English shippers. A pleasant watering-place. El-Moy : cries in the evening menzil. Er-Ruklcaba. Beduins. Sh'aara watering. Harrat 'Ashtry. Kr-liVa. Es-Seyl [KuRN EL-MEN AZIL]. Head of the W. el- Humth. New aspect of Arabia. The caravaners about to enter Mecca take the ihrdm. The Hatheyl. The ashraf descend from Mohammed. Arrive at the 'Ayn (ez-Zeyma). Mecca is a city of the Tehdma. The Nasrany leaves the Nejd caravan, at the station before Mecca ; and is assailed by a nomad hherif ...... Pp. 237-270 x CONTENTS CHAPTER XIII TAYIF. THE SHBRtF, EMIR OF MECCA Maabub and Salem. The Nasrany captive. Troubled day at the 'Ayn. Night journey with Mecca caravaners. Return to es-Seyl. The Seyl station. The Nasrany assailed again. A Mecca personage. An un- worthy Bessam. A former acquaintance. 'Okatz. The path beyond to et-Tayif. Night journey. Alight at a sherif's cottage near Tayif. Poor women of the blood of Mohammed. Aspect of et-Tayif. The town. The Nasrany is guest of a Turkish officer. Evening audience of the Sherif. Sherif Hasseyn, Emir of Mecca. The Sherif's brother Abdillah. Salem brings again their booty. [Doughty sets out again ; and reaches Jidda in safety. The end.] ' Pp. 271-292 CHAPTER I KHEYBAR. "THE APOSTLE'S COUNTRY" WE passed the gates made of rude palm boarding into the street of the Hejaz negro village, and alighted in the dusk before the house of an acquaintance of Ghroceyb. The host, hearing us busy at the door of his lower house, looked down from the casement and asked in the rasping negro voice what men we were ? Ghroceyb called to him, and then he came down with his brother to receive the guests. They took my bags upon their shoulders, and led us up by some clay stairs to their dwelling-house, which is, as at el-Ally, an upper chamber, here called suffa. The lower floor, in these damp oases, is a place where they leave the orchard tools, and a stable for their few goats which are driven in for the night. This householder was named Abel el-Hddy, ( Servitor of Him who leadeth in the way of Truth/ a young man under the middle age, of fine negro lineaments. — These negro-like Arabians are not seldom comely. Our host's upper room was open at the street side with long casements, tdga, to the floor ; his roof was but a loose strawing of palm stalks, and above is the house terrace of beaten clay, to which you ascend [they say erkd /] by a ladder of two or three palm beams, laid side by side, with steps hacked in them. Abd el-Hady's was one of the better cottages, for he was a sub- stantial man. Kheybar is as it were an African village in the Hejaz. Adb el-Hady spread his carpet and bade us welcome, and set before us Kheybar dates, which are yellow, small and stived together ; they are gathered ere fully ripe [their Beduin partner's impatience, and distrust of each other !] and have a drug-like or fenny savour, but are "cooler " than the most dates of the country and not unwholesome. After these days' efforts in the Harra we could not eat; we asked for water to quench our burning thirst. They hang their sweating girbies at the stair- head, and under them is made a hole in the flooring, that the drip may fall through. The water, drawn, they said, from the VOL. II. A 2 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA spring head under the basalt, tasted of the ditch,; it might be sulphurous. We had left our theliil kneebound in the street. Many persons, when they heard say that strangers had arrived, came up all this evening to visit us ; — the villagers were black men. Ghroceyb told them his tale of the ghrazzu ; and the negroes answered " Wellah ! except we sally in the morning to look for them — ! " They feared for the outlying corn lands, and lest any beast of theirs should be taken. There came with the rest a tall and swarthy white man, of a soldierly countenance, bearing a lantern and his yard-long tobacco-pipe : I saw he was of the mixed inhabitants of the cities. He sat silent with hollow eyes and smoked tobacco, often glancing at us ; then he passed the cliib'tik to me and enquired the news. He was not friendly with Abd el-Hady, and waived our host's second cup. The white man sat on smoking mildly, with his lantern burning ; after an hour he went forth [and this was to denounce us, to the ruffian lieu- tenant at Kheybar]. My rafik told me in a whisper, " That was Ahmed; he has been a soldier and is now a tradesman at Kheybar." — His brother was Mohammed en~Nejdmyt he who from the morrow became the generous defender of my adversity at Kheybar : they were citizens of Medina. It was near mid- night when the last coffee-drinkers departed ; then I whispered to Ghroceyb : " Will they serve supper, or is it not time to sleep ? " " My namesake, I think they have killed for thee ; I saw them bring up a sheep, to the terrace, long ago." — " Who is the sheikh of the village ?"— " This Abd el-Hady is their sheykh, and thou wilt find him a good man." My rafik lied like a (guileful) nomad, to excuse his not carrying me to the W. Aly village. Our host and his brother now at length descended from the house-top, bearing a vast metal tray of the seethed flesh upon a mess of thura (it may be a sort of millet) : since the locusts had destroyed their spring corn, this was the only bread-stuff left to them at Kheybar. The new day's light beginning to rise, Ghroceyb went down to the street in haste ; " Farewell, he said, and was there any difference between us, forgive it Khalil ; " and taking my right hand (and afraid perchance of the stranger's malediction), he stooped and kissed it. Hady, our host's brother, mounted also upon the croup of his thelul ; this strong-bodied young negro, with a long matchlock upon his shoulder, rode forth in his bare tunic, girded only with the hdzam or gunner's belt. Upon the baldric are little metal pipes, with their powder charges, and TIIR ENVIRONS OF KIIKVIVM? 3 upon the girdlr leather pouches for shot, flint and steel, ;m<l a hook wlinviipon ;i man they g<> commonly li.'irefoot — will dais. The hteams art adorned with copper studs juul beset with little rattling chains; there are some young men who may be seen continually muhdzamin, girded and vain- glorious with these tinkling ornaments of war. It is commonly said of trills \vll provided with fire-arms " They have many mulia/amin."— Ilady rode to find the traces of the ghrazzu of day. Some of the villagers came up to me immediately to enquire for medicines : they were full of tedious words ; and all was to lu'g of me and buy none. I left them sitting and went out to see the place, for this was Kheybar. Our host sent his son to guide me ; the boy led down by a lane and called me to enter a doorway and see a spring. I went in : — it was a mesjid ! and I withdrew hastily. The father (who had instructed the child beforehand), hearing from him when we came again that I had left the place without praying, went down and shut his street door. He returned and took his pistol from the wall, saying, * Let us go out together and he would show me round the town.' When we were in the street, he led me by an orchard path, out of the place. We came by a walled path through the palms into an open space of rush-grass and black vulcanic sand, es-Sefsdfa : there he showed me the head of a stream which welled strongly from under the figgera. The water is tepid and sulphurous as at el-Ally, and I saw in it little green-back and silver-bellied fishes : — all fish are named hUt by the Arabians. " Here, he said, is the (summer) menzil of the Dowla, in this ground stand the askars' tents." We sat down, and gazing into my face he asked me, * Were I afraid of the Dowla ? ' "Is the Dowla better or Ibn Kashid's government ? " — " The Dowla delivered us from the Beduw, — but is more burdenous." We passed through a burial ground of black vulcanic mould and salt-warp : the squalid grave-heaps are marked with head- stones of wild basalt. That funeral earth is chapped and ghastly, bulging over her enwombed corses, like a garden soil, in spring-time, which is pushed by the new-spiring plants. All is horror at Kheybar ! — nothing there which does not fill a stranger's eye with discomfort. — " Look, he said, this is the spring of our Lord Aly ! — I saw a lukewarm pool and running head of water. — Here our Lord Aly [Fatima's husband] killed Mdrhab, smiting off his head ; and his blade cleft that rock, which thou seest there divided to the earth : " — so we came beyond. — " And here, he 4 WANDEKINGS IN AKABIA said, is Aly's mesjid " [already mentioned]. The building is homely, laid in courses of the wild basalt blocks : it is certainly ancient. Here also the village children are daily taught their letters, by the sheykh of the religion. When we had made the circuit, " Let us go, he said, to the Emir" So the villager named the aga or lieutenant of a score of Ageyl from Medina. Those thelul riders were formerly Nejd Arabians ; but now, because the Dowla's wages are so long in coming, the quick-spirited Nejders have forsaken that sorry service. The Ageyl are a mixed crew of a few Nejders (villagers, mostly of el-Kasim, and poor Nomads), and of G alias, Turks, Albanians, Egyptians, Kurdies and Negroes. The Ageyl at Kheybar now rode upon their feet : some of their thelul s were dead, those that remained were at pasture (far off) with the nomads. They all drew daily rations of corn for their theluls alive and dead ; and how else might the poor wretches live ? who had not touched a cross of their pay (save of a month or twain) these two years. A few of the government armed men at Kheybar were zabtiyah, men of the police service. — " The Aga is a Kurdy," quoth Abd el-Hady. We ascended, in a side street, to a suffa, which was the soldiers' coffee-room : swords and muskets were hanging upon the clay walls. Soon after some of them entered ; they were all dark-coloured Gallas, girded (as townsmen) in their white tunics. They came in with guns from some trial of their skill, and welcomed us in their (Medina) manner, and sat down to make coffee. I wondered whilst we drank together that they asked me no questions ! We rose soon and departed. As we stepped down the clay stair, I heard a hoarse voice saying among them, " I see well, he is adu (an enemy) ; " — and I heard answered, " But let him alone awhile." It was time I thought to make myself known. When I asked where was the Kurdy Aga? my host exclaimed, "You did not see him ! he sat at the midst of the hearth." That was Abdullah es-Sirudn, chief of the Medina crew of soldiery : his father was " a Kurdy," but he was a black man with Galla looks, of the younger middle age, — the son of a (Galla) bond- woman. I was new to discern this Hejaz world, and the town manner of the Harameyn. In the street I saw two white faces coming out of a doorway ; they were infirm soldiery, and the men, who walked leaning upon long staves of palm-stalks, seemed of a ghastly pallor in the dreadful blackness of all things at Kheybar : they came to join hands with me, a white man, and passed on without speaking. One of them with a hoary beard was an Albanian, Muharram ; the other was an ABDULLAH, THE SOLDIERS* AGA 5 ptian. When we were again at home Abd el-llfidy locked his street door; and mining ahove stairs, " Tell me, said lie, art thou a Moslem ? and if no I will lay thy things upon a cow and send thee to a place of safety." — " Host, I am of the '•ys; my nation, thou n invest have heard say, is friendly with the Dowla, and I am of them whom ye name the Nasara." Abd el- 1 l.uly went out in the afternoon and left his street- door open ! There came up presently Sdlem a Bed u in Ageyly, to enquire for medicines, and a Galla with his arms, Sirtir ; — he it was who had named me adu. — " Half a real for the fever doses!" (salts and quinine), quoth Salem. The Galla mur- mured, * But soon it would be seen that I should give them for nothing ' ; and he added, " This man has little understanding of the world, for he discerns not persons : ho ! what countryman art thou?"— "I dwell at Damascus."— " Ha ! and that is my country, but thou dost not speak perfectly Araby ; I am thinking we shall have here a Nasrany : oho ! What brings thee hither ? " — " I would see the old Jews' country." — " The Jews' country ! but this is dirat er-Rasttl, the apostle's country : " so they forsook me. And Abd el-Hady returning, "What, said he, shall we do ? for wellah all the people is persuaded that thou art no Moslem." — " Do they take me for an enemy ! and the aga . . . ? " — " Ah ! he is bjabbtir, a hateful tyrant." My host went forth, and Sirur came up anew ; — he was sent by the aga. * What was I ? ' he demanded. — " An Engleysy, of those that favour the Dowla." — " Then a Nasrany ; sully aly en-Neby, — come on ! " and with another of the Ageyl the brutal black Galla began to thrust me to the stairs. Some villagers who arrived saying that this was the police, I consented to go with them. " Well, bring him (said the bystanders), but not with violence." — "Tell me, before we go further, will ye kill me without the house ? " I had secretly taken my pistol under my tunic, at the first alarm. At the end of the next street one was sitting on a clay bench to judge me, — that dark-coloured Abyssinian 'Kurdy', whom I heard to be the soldiers' aga. A rout of villagers came on behind us, but without cries. — In what land, I thought, am I now arrived ! and who are these that take me (because of Christ's sweet name !) for an enemy of mankind ? — Sirur cried, in his bellowing voice, to him on the clay bench, "I have detected him, — a Nasrany ! " I said, " What is this ! I am an Engleysy, and being of a friendly nation, why am I dealt with thus ? " " By Ullah, he answered, I was afraid to-day, art thou indeed an Engleysy, art thou not a Muskovy ? " — " I have said it already ! " — *k But I believe it not, and how may I trust thee ? " — " When I have answered, here at Kheybar, / am a Nasrdny, should I not 6 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA be true in the rest ? " — " He says well ; go back, Abel el-Hady, and fetch his baggage, and see that there be nothing left behind." The street was full of mire after the late rain ; so I spoke to Abdullah, and he rising led to an open place in the clay village which is called es-Saheyn, ' the little pan.' — " By God (added Abdullah es-Siruan, — the man was illiterate), if any books should be found with thee, or the what-they-call-them, — charts of countries, thou shalt never see them more : they must all be sent to the Pasha at Medina. But hast thou not an instrument, — ah ! and I might now think of the name, — I have it ! the air- measure ? — And from whence comest thou ?" — " From Hayil ; I have here also a passport from Ibn Rashld." Abdullah gave it to a boy who learned in the day school, — for few of the grown villagers, and none of those who stood by, knew their letters. Abdullah : " Call me here the sheykh Sdlih, to read and write for us." A palm-leaf mat was brought out from one of the houses and cast before us upon a clay bench ; I sat down upon it with Abdullah. — A throng of the black villagers stood gazing before us. So Salih arrived, the sheykh of this negro village — an elder man, who walked lame — with a long brass inkstand, and a great leaf of paper in his hand. Sir-udn : " Salih, thou art to write all these things in order. [My great camel-bags were brought and set down before him.] Now have out the things one by one ; and as I call them over, write, sheykh Salih. Begin : a camel-bridle, a girby, bags of dates, hard milk and temmn ; — what is this ? " — " A medicine box." — " Open it! " As I lifted the lid all the black people shrunk back and stopped their nostrils. Sirur took in his hands that which came upper- most, a square compass, — it had been bound in a cloth. " Let it be untied ! " quoth Abdullah. The fellow turning it in his hand, said, " Auh ! this is subtiny " (a square of Syrian soap), so Ab- dullah, to my great comfort, let it pass. But Abd el-Hady espying somewhat, stretched forth his hand suddenly, and took up a comb ; " Ha ! ha ! " cries my host (who till now had kindly harboured me ; but his lately good mind was turned already to fanatical rancour — the village named him Abu Summakh, ' Father Jangles') what is this perilous instrument, — ha! Nasrany ? Abdullah, let him give account of it; and judge thou if it be not some jin devised by them against the Moslemin ! " Next came up a great tin, which I opened before them : it was full of tea, my only refreshment. " Well, this you may shut again," said Abdullah. Next was a bundle of books. " Aha ! exclaimed the great man, the former things — hast thou written them, sheykh Salih ? — were of no account, but the books ! — NIK K.MI'TY PISTOL 7 thou .shall n«'Y,M- have t hrm again."1 Thru th.-y lighted upon the l>ra-s ivrl »>! a tap»' measure* "Ha! li- aiul see tho;i be truth (///o////// AY* MI Ji i/i h i this the sky-measure ': " " lleiv, I .-aid to him, I have a paper, which is a circular passport from the Wfily of Syria." — "Then it, sheykli Salili."* Salili pored over the written document awhile; — "I have perused it, he answered, hut. may perceive only the names, because it is written in Turl /, [the tnnguu was Arabic, luit engrossed in the llorid Persian manner ! |, and here at the foot is the seal of the Pasha," — and he read his name. •• Ho! ho ! (cries Sirfir) that Pasha was long ago ; and he is dead, I know it well." — A sigh of bodily weariness that would have rest broke from me. " Wherefore thus ? exclaimed the pious scelerat Abdullah, only stay thee upon el-Mowla (the Lord thy God)." — To my final confusion, they fetched up from the sack's bottom the empty pistol case ! — in that weapon was all my hope. "Aha, a pistol case! cried many voices, and, casting their bitter eyes upon me, oh thou ! where is the pistol ? " I answered nothing ; — in this moment of suspense, one exclaimed, " It is plain that Ibn Rashid has taken it from him." — " Ay, answered the black villagers about me, he has given it to Ibn Rashid ; Ibn Rashid has taken it from him, trust us, Abdullah." — A pistol among them is always preciously preserved in a gay bolster ; and they could not imagine that I should wear a naked pistol under my bare shirt. After this I thought ' Will they search my person ? ' — but that is regarded amongst them as an extreme outrage ; and there were here too many witnesses. He seemed to assent to their words, but I saw he rolled it in his turbid mind, * what was become of the Nasrany's pistol ? ' The heavy weapon, worn continually suspended from the neck, not a little molested me ; and I could not put off my Arab cloak (which covered it) in the sultry days. — So he said, " Hast thou money with thee ? — and we may be sure thou hast some. Tell us plainly, where is it, and do not hide it ; this will be better for thee, — and, that I may be friends with thee ! also it must be written in the paper ; and tell us hast thou anything else ? — mark ye 0 people, I would not that a needle of this man's be lost ! " — " Reach me that tin where you saw the tea : in the midst is my purse, — and in it, you see, are six liras ! " The thief counted them, with much liking, in his black palm ; then shutting up the purse he put it in his own bosom, saying, " Stilih, write down these six liras Fransawy. I have taken them for their better keeping ; and his bags will be under key in my own house." There came over to me Ahmed, whom I had seen last evening ; 8 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA he had been sitting with the old tranquillity amongst the lookers-on, and in the time of this inquisition he nodded many times to me friendly. " Md aleyk ^ md aleyk, take comfort, he said, there shall no evil happen to thee." — Abdullah : " Abd el-Hady, let him return to lodge with thee ; also he can cure the sick." The negro answered, " I receive again the kafir ! — Only let him say the testimony and I will receive him willingly." — " Then he must lodge with the soldiery ; thou Amdn — a Galla Ageyly — take him to your chamber : Khalil may have his pro- visions with him and his box of medicines." I saw the large manly presence standing erect in the back- ward of the throng — for he had lately arrived — of a very swarthy Arabian ; he was sheykhly clad, and carried the sword, and I guessed he might be some chief man of the irregular soldiery. Now he came to me, and dropping (in their sudden manner) upon the hams of the legs, he sat before me with the confident smiling humour of a strong man ; and spoke to me pleasantly. I wondered to see his swarthiness, — yet such are commonly the Arabians in the Hejaz — and he not less to see a man so ' white and red '. This was Mohammed en-Nejumy, Ahmed's brother, who from the morrow became to me as a father at Kheybar. " Go now, said Abdullah, with the soldier." — " Ma aleyk, ma aleyk," added some of the better- disposed bystanders. Abdullah : " You will remain here a few days, whilst I send a post to the Pasha (of Medina) with the books and papers." — " Ho ! ye people, bellows Sirur, we will send to the Pasha ; and if the Pasha's word be to cut his head off, we will chop off thy head Nasrany." " Trouble not thyself, said some yet standing by, for this fellow's talk, — he is a brute." Hated was the Galla bully in the town, who was valiant only with their hareem, and had been found khbaf, a skulking coward, in the late warfare. So I came with Aman to the small suffa which he inhabited with a comrade, in the next house. They were both Halusli, further-Abyssinians, that is of the land of the Gallas. Lithe figures they are commonly, with a feminine grace and fine lineaments ; their hue is a yellow-brown, ruddy brown, deep brown or blackish, and that according to their native districts, — so wide is the country. They have sweet voices and speak not one Galla tongue alike, so that the speech of distant tribes is hardly understood between them. Aman could not well understand his comrade's talk (therefore they spoke together in Arabic), but he spoke nearly one language with Sirur. Aman taught me many of his Galla words ; but to-day I remember no more than Ms&n, water. Though brought slaves to the Hejaz in THE NEJUMY 9 their childhood they forgot not there their country language : so many are now the Gallas in Mecca and Medina, that </x//// is currently spoken from house to house. Some of the beautiful Galla bondwomen become wives in the citizen families, even of the great, others are nurses and house servants ; and the Arab town children are bred up amongst them. — The poor fellows bade me be of good comfort, and all would now end well, after a little patience : one set bread before me, and went out to borrow dates for their guest. They said, " As for this negro people, they are not men but oxen, apes, sick of the devil and niggards." — These Semite-like Africans vehemently disdain the Sudan, or negro slave-race. " Great God ! " I have heard them say at Kheybar, " can these woolly polls be of the children of Adam ? " We heard Mohammed en-Nejumy upon the clay stairs. He said, "It is the first time I ever came hither, but for thy sake I come." At night-fall we went forth together, lighting our way with flaming palm-branches, to the soldiers' kahwa. Abdullah, whom my purse had enriched to-day, beckoned me to sit beside him. Their talk took a good turn, and Mohammed en-Nejiimy pronounced the famous formula : hull wdhed aly dinu, ' every man in his own religion ! ' — and he made his gloss, " this is to say the Yahudy in his law, the Nasrany in his law and the Moslem in his law ; aye, and the kafir may be a good faithful man in his belief." The Nejumy was an heroic figure, he sat with his sword upon his knees, bowing and assenting, at every word, to the black villain Abdullah : this is their Turkish town courtesy. Sometimes (having heard from me that I understood no Turkish) they spoke together in that language. Mohammed answered, after every clement saw of the black lieutenant, the pious praise [though it sounded like an irony], Ullah yultyith wejhak, ' the Lord whiten thy visage (in the day of doom) ! ' There was some feminine fall in the strong man's voice, — and where is any little savour of the mother's blood in right manly worth, it is a pleasant grace. He was not alto- gether like the Arabs, for he loved to speak in jesting-wise, with a kindly mirth : though they be full of knavish humour, I never saw among the Arabians a merry man ! Mohammed and Ahmed were sons of a Kurdy sutler at Medina ; and their mother was an Harb woman of the Ferra, a palm settlement of that Beduin nation in the Hejaz, betwixt the Harameyn. We drunk round the soldiers' coffee ; yet here was not the cheerful security of the booths of hair, but town constraint and Turkish tyranny, and the Egyptian plague of vermin. They bye and bye were accorded in their sober cups 10 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA that the Nasara might pass everywhere freely, only they may not visit the Harameyn : and some said, " Be there not many of Khalil's religion at Jidda ? the way is passed by riders in one night-time from Mecca " [many in the Hejaz pronounce Mekky~]. Abdullah said at last, "Wellah, Khalil is an honest man, he speaks frankly, and I love him." I was soon weary, and he sent his bondman to light me back to my lodging. Hear- ing some rumour, I looked back, and saw that the barefoot negro came dancing behind me in the street with his drawn sword. Abdullah said to me at the morning coffee, that I might walk freely in the village ; and the black hypocrite enquired ' had I rested well ? ' When it was evening, he said, " Rise, we will go and drink coffee at the house of a good man." We went out, and some of his soldiers lighted us with flaming palm leaves to the cottage of one Ibrahim el-kddy. Whilst we sat in his suffa, there came up many of the principal villagers. Ibrahim set his best dates before us, made up the fire, and began to prepare kahwa, and he brought the village governor his kerchief full of their green tobacco. Then Abdullah opened his black lips — to speak to them of my being found at Kheybar, a stranger, and one such as they had not seen in their lives. " What, he said, are these Nasara ? — listen all of you ! It is a strong nation : were not two or three Nasranies murdered some years ago at Jidda ? — well, what followed ? There came great war-ships of their nation and bombarded the place : but you the Kheyabara know not what is a ship ! — a ship is great, well nigh as the Husn (the old acropolis). They began to shoot at us with their artillery, and we that were in the fortress shot again ; but oh ! where was the fortress ? or was there, think ye, any man that remained in the town ? no, they all fled ; and if the Lord had not turned away that danger, we could not have resisted them. And who were those that fought against Jidda ? I tell you the Engleys, the people of this Khalil : the Engleys are high-handed, ay wellab, jababara! * * * * * * Abdullah, though ignorant in school-lore, spoke with that popular persuasion of the Turkish magistrates, behind whose fair words lies the crude handling of the sword. The Arabs and Turks whose books are men's faces, their lively ex- perience of mankind, and whose glosses are the common saws and thousand old sapient proverbs of their oriental world, touch near the truth of human things. They are old men in policy in their youth, and have little later to unlearn ; but especially they have \\ HONEST M;<;I;<> \\ i ii learned to r^peak well. Abdullah, ,'iiul the M'-dina the Mack Kheyabara spoke Medina Arabic. Their illiberal 1 speech resembles t he Syrian, but is more full and round, with some sound of ingenuous Arabian words : the tan win is nut heard at Kheybar. 1 thought the Nejumy spoke worst amount h"in all ; it might be he had learned of his father, a stranger, or that such was the (Hep/,) speech of his I larb village : his brother spoke better. Medina, besides her motley (now half Indian) population, is in some quarters a truly Arabian town ; there is much in her of the Arabian spirit: every year some Arabians settle there, and 1 have met with Medina citizens who spoke nearly as the upland Arabians. 1 was his captive, and mornings and evenings must present myself before Abdullah. The village governor oppressed me with cups of coifee, and his official chibuk, offered with comely smiles of his black visage ; until the skeleton three days' hos- pitality was ended. The soldiery were lodged in free quarters at Ivheybar, where are many empty houses which the owners let out in the summer months to the salesmen who arrive then from Medina. Abdullah was lodged in one of the better houses, the house of a black widow woman, whose prudent and beneficent humour was very honourably spoken of in the country. If any marketing nomads dismounted at her door, she received them bountifully ; if any in the village were in want, and she heard of it, she would send somewhat. Freely she lent her large dwelling, for she was a loyal woman who thought it reason to give place to the officer of the Dowla. Although a comely person in her early middle age, yet she constantly refused to take another mate, saying, ' She was but the guardian of the inheritance for her two sous.' She already provided to give them wives in the next years. The Kheybar custom is to mortgage certain palm-yards for the bride-money ; but thus the soil (which cannot bring forth an excessive usury) not seldom slips, in the end, quite out of the owner's hands. Therefore this honest negro wife imagined new and better ways : she frankly sold two beleds, and rode down with the price to Medina ; and bought a young Galla maiden, well disposed and gracious, for her elder son's wife : and she would nourish the girl as a daughter until they should both be of the age of marriage. The Kheya- bara are wont to match with the (black) daughters of their village; but the Galla women might be beloved even by white men. Abdullah once called me to supper : he had a good Medina mess of goat's flesh and f rench-beans. When we rose he smiled to those about him and boasted " Rag Ullak! ' it is God's truth,' 12 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA seeing Khalil has eaten this morsel with me, I could not devise any evil against him ! " Another time I came up weary in the afternoon, when the soldiery had already drunk their coffee and departed ; yet finding a little in the pot I set it on the coals, and poured out and sipped it. — Abdullah, who sat there with one or two more, exclaimed, " When I see Khalil drink only that cup, wellah I cannot find it in my heart to wish him evil : " — this was the half-humane black hypocrite ! The Nejumy, who — since a white man is the black people's " uncle " — was called in the town Amm Mohammed, did not forget me ; one forenoon I heard his pleasant voice at the stair head : " Sheykh Khalil, sheykh Khalil, hi/ ! come, I want thee." He led me to his house, which was in the next street, at the end of a dark passage, from whence we mounted to his suffa. The light, eth-thow, entered the dwelling room at two small case- ments made high upon the clay wall, and by the open ladder-trap to the roof : it was bare and rude. — " Sit down, sheykh Khalil, this is my poor place, said he ; we live here like the Beduw, but the Lord be praised, very much at our ease, and with plenty of all things : " Amm Mohammed was dwelling here as a trader. A Bishr woman was his housewife ; and she made us an excel- lent dish of moist girdle- cakes, gors, sopped in butter and wild honey. " This honey comes to me, said he, from the Beduw, in my buying and selling, and I have friends among them who bring it me from the mountains." The fat and the sweet [in the Hebrew Scriptures — where the fat of beasts is forbidden to be eaten — Fat things, milk and honey, or butter and honey, oil olive and honey] are, they think, all-cure ; they comfort the health of the weak-dieted. There is a tribe of savage men upon the wide Jebel Rodwa (before Yanba), who " are very long lived and of marvellous vigour in their extreme age ; and that is (say the Arabs) because they are nourished of venison (el-bedim) and wild honey." When we had eaten, "I and thou are now brethren, said the good man ; and, sheykh Khali), what time thou art hungry come hither to eat, and this house is now as thine own : undo the door and come upstairs, and if I am not within say to this woman, thou wouldst eat dates or a cake of bread, and she will make ready for thee." He told me that at first the negro villagers had looked upon me as a soldier of the Dowla ; but he said to them, ' Nay, for were the stranger a soldier he had gone to alight at the Siruan's or else at my beyt.' When, the day after, they began to know me, there had been a sort of panic terror among the black people. ' I was sdhar, they said, a warlock, come to bewitch their village ' : and the hareem said " Oh ! look ! how red he is ! " MUHARRAM 13 -in Mohammed: "This is a f.-.-i-i .1,-iy (./'/</ et shall we now go and visit the acquaintance ? " — We went from house to house of his villa^' friends : but none of them, in their high and holy day, had slain any head of cattle, — they are re- puted niggards ; yet in every household where we came a mess was set before us of girdle-bread sopped in samn. " I warn thee, sheykh Khalil, said my friend, we must eat thus twenty times before it is evening." " In these days, whilst we are sending to Medina, said Abdullah the Siruan, thou canst cure the sick soldiery ; we have two at Umm Kida, another is here. Sirur, and you, Salem, go with him, take your arms, and let Khalil see Muharram." — " I cannot walk far." — " It is but the distance of a gunshot from the Scfsdfa." — We came thither and descended behind the figgera, into another valley W. es-8illima, named thus because in the upper parts there is much wild growth of slim acacia trees. The eyes of the Aarab distinguish four kinds of the desert thorns : tdlh (the gum-acacia), sdmmara, sillima and sidla ; the leaves of them all are like, but the growth is diverse. The desert smiths cut t6lh timber for their wood work, it is heavy and tough ; the other kinds are too brittle to serve them. The sdmmara is good for firewood ; it is sweet-smelling, and burns with a clear heat leaving little ash, and the last night's embers are found alive in the morning. They have boasted to me of this good fuel, — "We believe that the Lord has given you many things in your plentiful countries, but surely ye have not there the sfirnmara ! " W. Sillima descends from the Harra beyond the trachytic mount Atwa, and gives below the basalt headland Khusshm es-Sefsdfa into W. Zeydteh, the valley of the greater Kheybar village and the antique citadel. W. Sillima is here a rusty fen, white with the salt-warp, summakha, exhaling a sickly odour and partly overgrown with sharp rushes, el-girt, which stab the shanks of unwary passengers. — Such is, to the white man, the deadly aspect of all the valley-grounds of Kheybar ! If you question with the villagers, seeing so much waste bottom and barrenness about them, they answer, "There is more already upon our hands than we may labour." The summakha soil, which is not the worst, can be cured, if for two or three seasons the infected salt-crusts be pared with the spade : then the brackish land may be sowed, and every year it will become sweeter. A glaze of salt is seen upon the small clay bottoms in the Harra ; yet of the many springs of Kheybar, 14 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA which are warm and with some smack of sulphur, there is not one brackish: they rise between certain underlying clays and the basalt, which is fifty feet thick, at the edge of the figgera. The large Kheybar valleys lie together, like a palm leaf, in the Harra border : they are gashes in the lava-field — in what manner formed it were not easy to conjecture — to the shallow clays beneath. Where an underlying (sandstone) rock comes to light it is seen scaly (burned) and discoloured. — We came up by walled ways through palm grounds and over their brook, to the village Umni Kida : this is Jeriat W. Aly. The site, upon the high wady-bank of basalt, is anqient, and more open and cheerful, and in a better air than the home village. We ascended near the gateway to a suffa, which was the soldiers' quarters ; the men's arms hanged at the walls, and upon the floor I saw three pallets. — The Turkish comrades bade us welcome in the hard manner of strangers serving abroad at wages, and tendered their chibuks. Two of them were those pale faces, which I had first seen in Kheybar ; the third was Mohammed, a Kurdy, from some town near Tiflis (in Russian Armenia). Muharram was a tall extenuated man, and plainly European. He had worn out forty years in military service in the Hejaz, about Medina and Mecca, and never the better : I asked him where was his fustdn ? He answered smiling, with half a sigh, " There was a time when we wore the petticoat, and many of the Arnaut were prosperous men at Medina ; but now they are dispersed and dead." He wore yet his large tasseled red bonnet, which seemed some glorious thing in the rusty misery of Kheybar ! His strength failed him here, the fever returned upon him : I gave him rhubarb in minute doses, and quinine. * : * * * The guest in the Arabic countries . sees the good disposition of his host, after three days, turned as the backside of a garment. — Each morning, after I had presented myself to the village tyrant at the kahwa, I went to breathe the air upon the figgera above the Sefsafa. I might sit there in the winter sun, without the deadly damps of the valley, to meditate my time away ; and read the barometer unespied, and survey the site of Kheybar, and the brick-red and purple-hued distance of mountains in the immense Arabian landscape beyond. One day having transcribed my late readings of the aneroid, I cast down the old papers, and, lest the wind should betray me, laid stones on them : but my vision never was good, and there were eyes that watched me, though I saw no man. As I walked A DANGEROUS WALK 15 there another d;iy a man upon ;i lionsc-tnp n, Kida, fired his gun at, me. The morning afl'-r, seeing two IIHMI approach with thoir matcli locks I retiirm-d to tin- vili found Abd.illah sitting with malevolent looks. " What is this, he said, that I hear of thee. ? — children of I 'nun Kida saw you hii ry j);ipers, I know not what ! They have taken them up, and carried t hem to the hamlet, where all the people were troubh -d ; and a slieykh, a trusty man, has been over here to complain to me. What were the papers ? [in their belief written full of en- chantments :] — and now the sheykhs have solemnly burned them." Besides a Beduwy had been to Abdullah accusing the Nasniny * that he saw me sitting upon the Harra with a paper in my hand '. Abdullah told me, that as I returned yesterday, by the path, through the plantations, two young men of Umm Kida sat behind the clay walling with their matchlocks ready, and disputed \vliether they should take my life; and said one to the other, " Let me alone, and I will shoot at him : " but his fellow answered, " Not now, until we see further ; for if his blood were shed we know not whom it might hurt." Abdullah : " What hast thou done, Khalil ? what is this that I hear of thee? The chief persons come to me accusing thee ! and I do tell thee the truth, this people is no more well-minded towards thee. Observe that which I say to thee, and go no more beyond the gates of the village ; — I say go not ! I may protect thee in the village, in the daytime : by night go not out of thy chamber, lest some evil befall thee ; and the blame be laid upon me. For Ullah knoweth — and here the malevolent fanaticism kindled in his« eyes — who is there might come upon thee with his knife ! — a stroke, Khalil, and thou art dead ! But the slayer was not seen, and the truth of it might never be known. Only in the day visit thine acquaintance, and sit in friendly houses. I have said go not beyond the gates ; but if thou pass them, and thou art one day slain, then am I clean of it! Canst thou look through walling? a shot from behind some of their (clay) walls may take thy life ; there are some here who would do it, and that as lightly as they shoot at crows, because thou art an alien, and now they have taken thee for an enemy ; and that they have not done it hitherto, wellah it was for my sake." * * * * At first he [Amm Mohammed] called me often to eat with him ; then seeing me bare of necessary things (Abdullah had now my purse) he took me altogether to his house to live with him, in the daytime. Some evenings we went abroad,— 16 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA 'nedowwer (said he,) el-liaky wa el-k&hwa, — seeking pleasant chat and coffee ', to friendly houses. At night, since his home was but an upper chamber, I withdrew to sleep in Aman's suffa. At each new sunrising I returned to him : after his prayers we breakfasted, and when the winter sun began to cast a little golden heat, taking up our tools, a crowbar, a spade and a basket, we went forth to an orchard of his ; and all this was devised by Mohammed, that I might not be divided from him. He . carried also (for my sake) his trusty sword, and issuing from the sordid village I breathed a free air, and found some respite in his happy company, in the midst of many apprehensions. Amm Mohammed set himself to open a water-pit in a palm ground of his next the troops' summer quarters ; the ground- water lies about a spade deep in the valley bottom of Kheybar, but the soil rising there and shallowing out under the figgera, he must break down an arm's length through massy basalt. We passed the days in this idle business : because he saw his guest full of weariness he was uneasy when in my turn I took up the bar. " Sit we down, sheykh Khalil, a breathing while ! ne'sma : nay, why make earnest matter of that which is but our pastime, or what haste is there so all be ended before the summer ? " A good crowbar is worth at Kheybar five reals; their (Medina) husbandmen' s-tools are fetched from the coast. The upper shells of basalt were easy to be broken through : but next lies the massy (crystalline) rock, which must be riven and rent up by force of arms; and doubtless all the old spring-heads of Kheybar have been opened thus ! — Seldom at this season there arrived a hubt, or company of marketing nomads : then his wife or son called home Amm Mohammed, and the good man returned to the village to traffic with them. Amm Mohammed — endowed with an extraordinary eyesight — was more than any in this country, a hunter. Sometimes, when he felt himself enfeebled by this winter's (famine) diet of bare millet, he would sally, soon after the cold midnight, in his bare shirt, carrying but his matchlock and his sandals with him : and he was far off, upon some high place in the Harra, by the day dawning, from whence he might see over the wide vulcanic country. When on the morrow I missed the good man, I sat still in his suffa, full of misgiving till his coming home again ; and that was near mid-day. Only two or three days of autumn rain had fallen hereabout, and the new blade was hardly seen to spring; the gazelles and the wild goats had forsaken this side of the Harra : Amm Mohammed there- ANCIENT INSCRIPTK > 17 fore found nothing. — At Kheybar they name the stalker of great ground game fjcmn'i* : *•//<'///, is the light hunter with hawk and hound, to take the desert hare. He led me with him sometime upon the Harra, to see certain ancient inscriptions ; — they were in Kufic, scored upon the basalt rock, and full of Ullah and Mohammed. Many old Arabic inscriptions may be seen upon the scaly (sandstone) rocks, which rise in the valley, half an hour below the place. I found no more of heathen Arabic than two or three inscriptions, each of a few letters. They are scored upon a terrace of basalt, under the Khusshm es-Sefsafa, with images of animals: I found the wild ox, but not the elephant, the giraffe, and other great beasts of the African continent, which Aman told me he had seen there. * * * (Doughty describes the ruined village el-Gcreyeh, and the Husn, or citadel rock. The villagers, and their ancient partnership in the soil with the Beduins. The Medina soldiery.) * * * In the third week of my being in this captivity at Kheybar, the slave-spirited Abdullah wrote to the Pasha of Medina. Since the village governor knew no letters, the black sheykh Salih was his scrivener, and wrote after him : " Upon such a day of the last month, when the gates of Kheybar were opened in the morning, we found a stranger without, waiting to enter. He told us that a Beduwy, with whom he arrived in the night, had left him there and departed. When we asked him what man he was ? he answered ' an Engleysy ' ; and he ac- knowledged himself to be a Nasrany. And I, not knowing what there might be in this matter have put the stranger in ward, and have seized his baggage, in which we have found some books and a paper from Ibn Rashid. So we remain in your Lordship's obedience, humbly awaiting the commandments of your good Lordship." — "Now well, said Abdullah; and seal it, Salih. Hast thou heard this that I have written, Khalil ? "— " Write only the truth. When was I found at your gates? I rode openly into Kheybar." — " Nay, but I must write thus, or the VOL. II. B 18 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA Pasha might lay a blame upon me and say, ' Why didst them suffer him to enter ? ' — That Heteymy lodged in the place all night, and he was a gomany ! also his thelul lay in the street, and I did not apprehend him : — Oh God ! where was then my wit ? I might [the thief murmured] have taken his drome- dary ! Listen, everyone of you here present ! for the time to come, ye are to warn me when any strangers arrive; that if there be anything against them, they may be arrested immediately." Abdullah had in these days seized the cow of an orphan, — for which all the people abhorred him — a poor minor without de- fence, that he might drink her milk himself : so he wrote another letter to the Pasha, " I have sequestered a cow for arrears of taxes, and will send her unto your lordship ; the beast is worth fifteen reals at Kheybar, and might be sold for fifty at el- Medina." In a third paper he gave up his account of the village tithing to the Dowla : all the government exactions at Kheybar were together 3600 reals. [For this a regiment of soldiers must march every year to (their deaths at) Kheybar !] Abdullah's men being not fully a score were reckoned in his paysheet at forty. If any man died, he drew the deceased's salary himself, to the end of his term of service. Once every year he will be called to muster his asakar ; but then with some easy deceit, as by hiring or compelling certain of the village, and clothing them for a day or two, he may satisfy the easy passing over of his higher officers ; who full of guilty bribes themselves, look lightly upon other men's criminal cases. Abdullah added a postscript. " It may please your honour to have in remembrance the poor askars that are hungry and naked, and they are looking humbly unto your good Lordship for some relief." In thirty and two months they had not been paid ! — what wonder though such wretches, defrauded by the Ottoman government, become robbers ! Now they lifted up their weary hearts to God and the Pasha, that. a new khtisna, or ' paymaster's chest of treasure ', from Stambul might be speedily heard of at el-Medina. These were years of wasting warfare in Europe ; of which the rumour was heard confusedly at this unprofitable distance. So Abdullah sealed his letters, which had cost him and his empressed clerk three days' labour, until their black temples ached again. These were days for me sooner of dying than of life ; and the felonous Abdullah made no speed to deliver me. The govern- ment affairs of the village were treated-of over cups of coffee ; and had Salih not arrived betimes, Abdullah sent for him, with authority. The unhappy sheykh with a leg short came then in haste ; and the knocking of his staff might be heard through the THE SIRUAN AT MEDINA I'.i length of the street, whilst the audience sat in silence, and t Ju- ry blood seemed to boil in the black visage of Abdullah. When he came up, ' Why wast thou not here ere this, sheykh Sulih ? ' he would say, in a voice which made the old mini tremble ; Stilih answered nothing, only rattling his inkstand he began to pluck out his reed pens. The village sheykh had no leisure now to look to his own affairs ; and for all this pain he received yearly from the government of Medina the solemn mockery of a scarlet mantle : but his lot was now cast in with the Dowla, which he had welcomed ; and he might lose all, and were even in danger of his head, if Ibn Eashid entered again. It is the custom of these Orientals, to sit all day in their coffee halls, with only a resting-while at noon. To pass the daylight hours withdrawn from the common converse of men were in their eyes unmanly ; and they look for no reasonable fellowship with the hareem. Women are for the house-service ; and only when his long day is past, will the householder think it time to re-enter to them. Abdullah drank coffee and tobacco in his soldiers' kaliwa ; where it often pleased him to entertain his company with tales of his old prowess and prosperity at Medina : and in his mouth was that round kind of utterance of the Arabic coffee-drinkers, with election of words, and dropping with the sap of human life. Their understanding is like the rnoon, full upon this side of shining shallow light ; but all is dimness and deadness upon the side of science. He told us what a gallant horseman he had been, — he was wont to toss a javelin to the height, wellah, of the minarets in Medina ; and how he went like a gentleman in the city, and made his daily devout prayers in the hdram ; nor might he ever be used to the rudeness of tbeliil riding, because nature had shaped him a gentle cavalier, lie had ridden once in an expedition almost to el-Hejr ; and as they returned he found an hamlet upon a mountain, whose in- habitants till that day, wellah, had not seen strangers. He had met with wild men, when he rode to Yanba, — that was upon the mountain Rodwa ; those hill -folk [Jeheyna] besides a cotton loin-cloth, go naked. One of them an ancient, nearly ninety years of age, ran on before his horse, leaping like a wild goat among the rocks ; and that only of his good will, to be the stranger's guide. He boasted he had bought broken horses for little silver, and sold them soon for much ; so fortunate were his stars at Medina. In the city he had a chest four cubits long ; a cubit deep and wide ; and in his best time it was full of reals, and lightly as they came to his hand, he spent them again. He had a Galla slave-lad at Medina who went gaily clad, and had 20 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA sweetmeats and money, so that he wondered ; but upon a day, his infamy being known, Abdullah drew a sword and pursued his bondsman in the street and wounded him, and sold him the day after to one of his lovers, for five reals. — It seems that amongst them a householder may maim or even slay his bond- servant in his anger and go unpunished, and the law is silent ; for as Moses said, HE is HIS CHATTEL. * * * ' * The Kheyabara inured to the short tyranny of the Beduins were not broken to this daily yoke of the Dowla. They had no longer sanctuary in their own houses, for Abdullah summoned them from their hearths at his list ; their hare em were beaten before their faces ; — and now his imposition of firewood ! Abdullah sent for the chief murmurers of the village ; and looking gallantly, he sought with the unctuous words of Turkish governors to persuade them. " Are not the soldiers quartered, by order of the Dowla, upon you in this village ? and I say, sirs, they look unto you for their fuel, — what else should maintain this kahwa fire ? which is for the honour of Kheybar, and where ye be all welcome. Listen ! — under his smiles he looked dangerous, and spoke this proverb which startled me : — the military authority is what ? It is like a stone, whereupon if anyone fall he will be broken, but upon whom the Dowla shall fall he will be broken in pieces. I speak to you as a friend, the Doivla lias a mouth gaping wide [it is a criminal government which devours the subject people], and that cries evermore hdt-hdt-hdt, give ! give ! — And what is this ? 0 ye the Kheyabara, I am mild heretofore ; I have well deserved of you : but if ye provoke me to lay upon you other burdens, ye shall see, and I will show it you ! It had been better for you that you had not complained for the wood ; for now I think to tax your growing tobacco. — I have reckoned that taking one field in eight, I shall raise from Kheybar a thousand reals, and this I have left to you free hitherto. And whatsoever more I may lay upon you, trust me Sirs it will be right well received ; and for such I shall be highly commended at Medina." Kheybar is three sheykh's suks. — Atewy, a sturdy carl, chief of the upper suk under the Husn, answered for himself and his, that they would no longer give the wood.' Abdullah sent for him ; but Atewy would not come. Abdullah imprisoned two of Atewy's men : Atewy said it should not be so ; and the men of his suk caught up bucklers and cutlasses, and swore to break up the door and release them. Half of the Ageyl askars at Kheybar could not, for sickness, bear the weight of their NEGRO RIOT I. 21 \\v:ipi>ns ; ;in«l the strong negroes, when their Mood was moved, contemned the Siruan's pitiful band of feeble wretches. Abdullah sent out his bully Sirfir, with the big brazen voice, to threaten the rioters : but the Galla coward was amazed at their settled countenance, and I saw him sneak home to Abdullah ; who hearing that the town was rising, said to the father of his village housewife, " And wilt thou also forsake me ? " The man answered him, " My head is with thy head ! ' Abdullah who had often vaunted his forwardness to the death, in any quarrel of the Dowla, now called his men to arm ; he took down his pair of horseman's pistols from the wall, with the ferocity of the Turkish service, and descended to the street ; determined * to persuade the rioters, and if no wellah he would shed blood.' — He found the negroes' servile heat somewhat abated : and since they could not contend with ' the Dowla ', they behaved themselves peaceably: Abdullah also promised them to release the captives. Abdullah re-entered the kahwa, — and again he summoned Atewy ; who came now, — and beginning some homely excuses, " Well, they cared not, he said, though they gave a little wood, for Abdullah's sake, only they would not be compelled." Abdullah, turning to me, said " Wheu ! now hast thou seen, Khalil, what sheytans are the Kheyabara ! and wast thou not afraid in this hurly-burly ? I am at Kheybar for the Dowla, and these soldiers are under me ; but where wert thou to-day, if I had not been here ? " — " My host's roof had sheltered me, and after that the good will of the people." — 'Now let the Kheyabara, he cried, see to it, and make him no more turmoils ; or by Ullah he would draw on his boots and ride to Medina ! and the Pasha may send you another governor, not easy as I am, but one that will break your backs and devour you : and as for me, wellah, I shall go home with joy to mine own house and children.' * * * * Abdullah, who knew the simple properties of numbers, told them upon his fingers in tens ; but could not easily keep the count, through his broken reckoning, rising to thousands. — And devising to deliver a Turkish bill of his stewardship, he said, with a fraudulent smile ; * We may be silent upon such and such little matters, that if the Pasha should find a fault in our numbers, we may still have somewhat in hand wherewith to amend it. The unlettered governor made up these dispatches in the public ear, and turning often to his audience he enquired, * Did they approve him, Sirs?' and only in some very privy matter he went up with sheykh Sulih to indite upon his house- 22 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA terrace. Abdullah hired Dakhil (not the Menhel), one of the best of the black villagers, to carry his government budget, for four reals, to Medina. Dakhil, who only at Kheybar, besides the Nejumy, was a hunter, fared on foot : and because of the danger of the way he went clad (though it was mid-winter) in an old (calico) tunic ; he left his upper garment behind him. i Many heavy days must pass over my life at Kheybar, unti Dakhil's coming again; the black people meanwhile looked with doubt and evil meaning upon the Nasrany, — because the Pasha might send word to put me to death. Felonous were the Turkish looks of the sot Abdullah, whose robber's mind seemed to be suspended betwixt his sanguinary fanaticism and the dread remembrance of Jidda and Damascus : the brutal Sirur was his privy counsellor. — Gallas have often an extreme hatred of this name, Nasrany : it may be because their border tribes are in perpetual warfare with the Abyssinian Christians. Abdullah had another counsellor, whom he called his ' uncle ', — Aly, the religious sheykh, crier to prayers, and the village schoolmaster. Looking upon Aly's mannikin visage, full of strange variance, I thought he might be a little lunatic ; — of this deformed rankling complexion, and miserable and curious humour, are all their worst fanatics. I enquired of Amm Mohammed ; and ho remembered that Aly's mother had died out of her mind. Aly was continually breathing in the ass's ears of Abdullah that the Nasrany was adu ed-din, ' enemy of the faith ; ' and ' it was due to the Lord (said he) that I should perish by the sword of the Moslemin. Let Abdullah kill me ! cries the ape-face ; and if it were he durst not himself, he might suffer the thing to be done. And if there came any hurt of it, yet faithful men before all things must observe their duty to Ullah.' — The worst was that the village sheykh Salih, other- wise an elder of prudent counsel, put-to his word that Aly had reason ! The Nejumy hearing of the counsels of Abdullah cared not to dissemble his disdain. He said of Aly, " The hound, the slave ! and all the value of him [accounting him in his contempt a bondman] is ten reals : and as for the covetous fool and very ass Abdullah, the father of him bought the dam of him for fifty reals ! " — But their example heartened the baser spirits of the village, and I heard again they had threatened to shoot at the kafir, as I walked in the (walled) paths of their plantations. Amm Mohammed therefore went no more abroad, when we were together, without his good sword. And despising the black villagers he said, " They are apes, and not children of Adam ; Oh ! which of them durst meddle in my matter ? were AMM MOHAMMED, OSTRICH OR CAMKL 13 it only of a clog or a chicken in my house ! But sheykh Khalil eats with me every day in one dish." The strong man added, ' He would cut him in twain who laid an hand on Khalil ; and if any of them durst sprinkle Khalil with water, he would sprinkle him with his blood ! * Abdullah, when we sat with him, smiled with all his Turkish smiles upon the Nejumy; and Amm Mohammed smiled as good to his black face again. "But (quoth he) let no man think that I am afraid of the Dowla, nor of sixty Dowlas ; for I may say, Abdullah, as once said the ostrich to the Beduwy, ' If thou come to take camels, am I not a bird ? but comest thou hither a-fowling, behold, Sir ! I am a camel.* So if the Aarab trouble me I am a Dowlany, a citizen of the illustrious Medina, — where I may bear my sword in the streets [which may only officers and any visiting Beduw], because I have served the Dowla. And, if it go hard with me upon the side of the Dowla, I am Harlnj, and may betake me to the Fcrni (of the Beny Amr) ; that is my mother's village, in the mountains [upon the middle derb\ between the Haramejai : there I have a patrimony and a house. The people of the Ferra are my cousins, and there is no Dowla can fetch me from thence, neither do we know the Dowla ; for the entry is strait as a gateway in the jebel, so that three men might keep it against a multitude. :> — And thus the Nejumy defended my solitary part, these days and weeks and months at Kheybar ; — one man against a thousand ! Yet dwelling in the midst of barking tongues, with whom he must continue to live, his honest heart must some- times quail, (which was of supple temper, as in all the nomad blood). And so far he gave in to the popular humour that certain times, in the eyes of the people, he affected to shun me : for they cried out daily upon him, that he harboured the Nasrfiny ! — " Ah ! Khalil, he said to me, thou canst not imagine all their malice ! " Neither was this the first time that Mohammed en-Nejumy had favoured strangers in their trouble. — A Medina tradesman was stripped and wounded in the wilderness as he journeyed to Kheybar ; and he arrived naked. The black villagers are in- hospitable; and the Medina citizen, sitting on the public benches, waited in vain that some householder would call him. At last Ahmed went by ; and the stranger, seeing a white man, — one that (in this country) must needs be a fellow citizen of Medina, said to him, " What shall I do, my townsman ? of whom might I borrow a few reals in this place, and buy myself clothing ? " Ahmed : " At the street's end yonder is sitting a tall white man ! nsk him : " — that was Mohammed — '• Ah ! Sir, said the poor 24 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA tradesman, finding him ; them art so swarthy, that I had well nigh mistaken thee for a Beduwy ! " Amm Mohammed led him kindly to his house and clothed him : and the wounded man sojourned with his benefactor and Ahmed two or three months, until they could send him to Medina. "And now when I come there, and he hears that I am in the city, said Amm Mohammed, he brings me home, and makes feast and rejoicing." — This human piety of the man was his thank- offering to the good and merciful Providence, that had pros- pered him and forgiven him the ignorances of his youth ! Another year, — it was in the time of Ibn Rasbid's govern- ment— when the Nejumy was buying and selling dates and cotton clothing in the harvest-market at Kheybar, some Annezy men came one day haling a naked wretch, with a cord about his neck, through the village street : it was an Heteymy ; and the Beduins cried furiously against him, that he had with- held the khuwa, ten reals ! and they brought him to see if any man in Kheybar, as he professed to them, would pay for him ; and if no, they would draw him out of the town and kill him. The poor soul pleaded for himself, " The Nejumy will redeem me : " so they came on to the Rahabba, where was at that time Mohammed's lodging, and the Heteymy called loudly upon him. Mohammed saw him to be some man whom he knew not : yet he said to the Annezy, " Loose him." — "We will not let him go, unless we have ten reals for him." — " But I say, loose him, for my sake." — " We will not loose him." — " Then go up Ahmed, and bring me ten reals from the box." " I gave them the money, said Mohammed, and they released the Heteymy. I clothed him, and gave him a waterskin, and dates and flour for the journey, and let him go. A week later the poor man returned with ten reals, and driving a fat sheep for me." Mohammed had learned (of a neighbour) at Medina to be a gunsmith, and in his hands was more than the Arabian in- genuity ; his humanity was ever ready. A Beduwy in the fruit harvest was bearing a sack of dates upon Mohammed's stairs ; his foot slipped, and the man had a leg broken. Mohammed, with no more than his natural wit, which they call kdwas, set the bone, and took care of him until he recovered ; and now the nomad every year brings him a thankoffering of his samn and dried milk. Mohammed, another time, found one wounded and bleeding to death : he sewed together the lips of his wound with silken threads, and gave him a hot infusion of saffron to drink, the quantity of a fenjeyn, two or three ounces, which he tells me will stay all haemorrhages. The bleeding ceased, and the man recovered. CHAPTER II TIII-: MEDINA LIFE AT KHEYBAR A MM MOHAMMED'S father was a Kurdy of Upper Syria, from the village Beylan,near Antioch (where their family yet remain); their name is in that language Yelduz, in Arabic Nejiimy, [of H'JUI, star]. The old Nejumy was purveyor in Medina to the Bashy Bazuk. He brought up his provision convoys himself, by the dangerous passage from Yanba : the good man had wedded an Harb woman, and this delivered him from their nation ; moreover he was known upon the road, for his manly hospitable humour, to all the Beduw. He received, for his goods, the soldier's bills on their pay (ever in arrear), with some abatement ; which paper he paid to his merchants at the cur- rent rate. And he became a substantial trader in the Holy City. He was a stern soldier and severe father ; and dying he left to his three sons, who were Bashy Bazuk troopers, no more than the weapons in their right hands and the horses ; — he had six or eight Syrian hackneys in his stable. He left them in the service of the Dowla, and bade them be valiant : he said that this might well suffice them in the world. All his goods and the house he gave to their mother, besides a maintenance to the other women ; and he appointed a near kinsman, to defend her from any recourse against her of his sons. — The horses they sold, and the price was soon wasted in riot by Mohammed, the elder of the young brethren : and then, to replenish his purse, he fell to the last unthrift of gaming. And having thus in a short novelty misspent himself, his time and his substance, he found himself bare : and he had made his brethren poor. When the Bashy Bazuk were disbanded, Mohammed and Ahmed took up a humble service ; they became dustmen of the temple, and carried out the daily sweeping upon asses, for which they had eightpence daily wages. Besides they hired themselves as journeymen, at sixpence, to trim the palms, to water the soil, to 26 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA dig, to build walls in the orchards. Weary at length of his illiberal tasks, Mohammed turned to his father's old friends, and borrowed of them an hundred reals. He became now a sales- man of cotton wares in the suk ; but the daily gain was too little to maintain him ; and in the end he was behind the hand more than four hundred reals. With the few crowns which remained in his bag he bought a broken mill-horse, and went with her to Kheybar ; where the beast browsing (without cost to him) in the wet valleys, was bye and bye healed ; and he sold her for the double in Medina. Then he bought a cow at Kheybar, and he sold his cow in the city for double the money. And so going and coming, and begin- ning to prosper at Kheybar, he was not long after master of a cow, a horse, and a slave ; which he sold in like manner, and more after them : — and he became a dealer in clothing and dates in the summer market at Kheybar. When in time he saw him- self increased, he paid off two hundred reals of his old indebted- ness. Twelve years he had been in this prosperity, and was now chief of the autumn salesmen (from Medina), and settled at Kheybar: for he had dwelt before partly at el-Hayat and in Medina. The year after the entering of the Dowla, Ahmed came to live with him. He could not thrive in the Holy City ; where passing his time in the coffee houses, and making smoke of his little silver, he was fallen so low that Mohammed sent the real which paid for his brother's riding, in a returning hubt, to Kheybar ; — where arriving in great languor he could but say, ' His con- solation was, that his good brother should bury him ! ' — Moham- med, with the advantage of his summer trading, purchased every year (the villagers' right in) a beled for forty or fifty reals. He had besides three houses, bought with his money, and a mare worth sixty reals. His kine were seven, and when they had calved, he would sell some, and restore one hundred reals more to his old creditors. A few goats taken up years ago in his traffic with the nomads, were become a troop ; an Heteymy client kept them with his own in the khala. Also his brother had prospered : " See, said Mohammed, he lives in his own house ! Ahmed is now a welfaring trader, and has bought him- self a beled or two." * * * * * * Mohammed, though so worthy a man and amiable, was a soldier in his own household. When I blamed him he said, " I snib my wife because a woman must be kept in subjection, for else they will begin to despise their husbands." He chided A CHIDING KATIIKK 27 every hour his patirnt and diligent Bcdiiwi;i as ////•/</ /////// (£ ' of cursed kind.' Ho had a mind to take another wife r. than tins to his liking; for, he said, she was not fair; and in hope of more offspring, though she had thrice borne him children in four or five years, — but two were dead in the sickly air of Kheybar : " a wife, quoth he, should be come of good kin, and be liberal." Son and housewife, he chid them continually ; only to his guest, Amm Mohammed was a mild Arabian. Once I saw him — these are the uncivil manners of the town — rise to strike his son ! The Beduwia ran between them to shelter her step-son, though to her the lad was not kind. I caught the Nejumy's arm, yet his force bruised the poor woman ; — and " wellah, she said, smiling in her tears to see the tempest abated, thy hand Mohammed is heavy, and I think has broken some of my bones." Haseyn bore at all times his father's hard usage with an honest submission. We passed-by one day where Haseyn ploughed a field, and, when I praised the son's diligence, Mohammed smiled ; but in that remembering his hard custom he said, " Nay, he is idle, he will play with the lads of the village and go a gunning." — Each morning when Haseyn returned to his father's sufi'a, his father began his chiding : " What ! thou good-for-nothing one, should a young man lie and daze till the sun rise over him ? " Hardly then his father suffered him to sit down a moment, to swallow the few dates in his hand ; but he rated him forth to his labour, to keep cows in the Hdlhal, to dig, to plough, to bring in the ass, to seek his father's strayed mare, to go about the irrigation. Week, month and year, there was no day when Haseyn might sit at home for an hour; but he must ever avoid out of his father's sight. Sometimes Mohammed sent him out, before the light, fasting, far over the Harra, with some of the village, for wood ; and the lad returned to break his fast at mid-afternoon. If any day his father found his son in the village before the sun was set, he pursued him with outrageous words, in the public hearing ; " Graceless ! why come home so soon ? (or, why earnest thou not sooner ?) Ha ! stand not, tlior ! steer, ox, to gape upon me, — enliaj! remove out of my sight — thou canst run fast to play ; now, irkud ! ijri ! run about thy business. Is it to such as thee I should give a wife to-year?" Haseyn: "What wouldst thou have me to do, father ? "_" Out of my sight, kbr ! Ullah punish that face!" and he would vomit after him such ordures of the lips (from the sink of the soldiers' quarters at Medina), akerdt, kharra, tirras, or he dismissed his son with laanat Ullah alcyk, ' God's curse be with thee.' Haseyn returned to the house, to SUP, 28 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA little before nightfall. Then his father would cry: " Ha ! unthrift, thou hast done nothing to-day but play in the Halhal ! — he stares upon me like an ox, bdkr ! " — " Nay but father I have done as thou badest me." — "Durst thou answer me, chicken! now make haste to eat thy supper, sirra, and be- gone." Haseyn, a lad under age, ate not with his father and the guest ; but after them of that which remained, with his father's jara, whom he called, in their manner, his mother's sister, khdlaty. Doubtless Mohammed had loved Haseyn, whilst he was still a child, with the feminine affection of the Arabs ; and now he thought by hardness, to make his son better. But his harsh dealing and cries in the street made the good man to be spoken against in the negro village ; and for this there was some little coldness betwixt him and his brother Ahmed. But the citizen Ahmed was likewise a chider and striker, and for such his Kheybar wife, Mohammed's housewife's sister, had forsaken him : he had a town wife at Medina. Why, I asked, was she not here to keep his house ? Ahmed: " I bring my wife to inhabit here ! only these blacks can live at Kheybar, or else, we had taken it from them long ago ! " Ahmed's children died in their youth, and he was unmindful of them : " Ahmed has no feeling heart," said his brother Mohammed. I counselled Amm Mohammed to have a better care for his son's health, and let him be taught letters. " Ay, said his father, I would that he may be able to read in the koran, against the time of his marriage, for then he ought to begin to say his prayers (like a man)." * Ahmed he would say is half-witted, for he spends all that ever he may get in his buying and selling, for kahwa and dokhan. Mohammed [in such he resembled the smiths' caste] used neither. " Is that a wise man, he jested, who will drink coffee and tan his own bowels ? " Yet Ahmed must remember, amongst his brother's kindness, that the same was he who had made him bare in the beginning : even now the blameworthy brother's guilts were visited upon his head, and the generous sinner went scatheless ! — Mohammed, wallowing in the riot of his ignorant youth at Medina, was requited with the evil which was sown by the enemy of mankind. Years after he cured himself with a violent specific, he called it in Arabic " rats' bane ", which had loosened his teeth ; a piece of it that Mohammed showed me was red lead. Though his strong nature resisted so many evils and the malignity of the Kheybar fevers, the cruel malady (only made inert) remained in him with blackness of the great joints. And Ahmed living with him VlMKICE TO ULLAII at Khoybar and extending the indi^-nt liand to his brother's mess, received from Mohammed's beneficent hand the contagion which had wasted him from the state of an halo man to his present infirmity of body. The rude negro villagers resorted to Ahmed, to drink coffee and hear his city wisdom ; and he bore it very impatiently 1 li if his brother named him mejnun in the town. " Sheykh Khalil, he said to me, how lookest thou upon sheykh Mohammed V " " I have not found a better man in all." — " But he is fond and childish." When Ahmed sickened to death in the last pesti- lence Mohammed brought a bull to the door, and vowed a vow to slaughter him, if the Lord would restore his brother. Ahmed recovered: and then Mohammed killed the bull, his thank- offering, and divided the flesh to their friends ; — and it was much for a poor man ! In these days Mohammed killed his yearly sacrifice of a goat, which he vowed once when Haseyn was sick. He brought up his goat when the beasts came home in the evening ; and first taking coals in an earthen censer he put on a crumb of incense, and censed about the victim. I asked where- fore he did this ? he answered : " That the sacrifice might be well pleasing to Ullah ; and do ye not so ? " He murmured prayers, turning the goat's head towards Mecca; and with his sword he cut her throat. When he heard from me that this was not our custom, — every man to kill his own sacrifice, he seemed to muse in himself, that we must be but a faint-hearted people. One early morning, his son going about the irrigation had found a fox drowned in our well. — Haseyn flung it out upon the land ; and when we came thither, and could not at first sight find this beast, " No marvel, quoth Mohammed, for what is more sleighty than a fox ? It may be he stiffened himself, and Haseyn threw him out for dead : " — but we found the hosenny cast under some nettles, dead indeed. From the snout to the brush his fur was of such a swart slate colour as the basalt figgera ! only his belly was whitish. Amm Mohammed drew the unclean carcase out of his ground, holding a foot in a handful of palm lace. I told the good man how, for a fox-brush sheykhs in my be led use to ride furiously, in red mantles, upon horses — the best of them worth the rent of some village — with an hundred yelling curs scouring before them ; and leaping over walls and dykes they put their necks and all in adventure : and who is in at the hosenny 's death he is the gallant man. For a moment the subtil Arabian regarded me with his piercing eyes as if he would say, " Makest thou mirth of me ! " but soon again relenting 30 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA to his frolic humour, "Is this, he laughed, the chevying of the fox ? " — in which he saw no grace. And the good Medina Moslem seemed to muse in spirit, 'Wherefore had the Lord endowed the Yahud and Nasara with a superfluity of riches, to so idle uses ? ' The wolf no less, he said, is a sly beast : upon a time, he told me, as he kept his mother's goats at the Ferra in his youth, and a (Harb) maiden was herding upon the hill- side with him, he saw two wolves approach in the plain ; then he hid himself, to watch what they would do. At the foot of the rocks the old wolf left his fellow ; and the other lay down to await him : that wolf ascended like an expert hunter, pausing, and casting his eyes to all sides. The trooping goats went feed- ing at unawares among the higher crags ; and Mohammed saw the wolf take his advantage of ground and the wind, in such wise that a man might not do better. * Grey legs ' chose out one of the fattest bucks in the maiden's herd, and winding about a rock he sprang and bit the innocent by the throat :— Mohammed's shot thrilled the wolf's heart at the instant ; and then he ran in to cut the bleeding goat's throat (that the flesh might be lawful meat). * * * * * * Mohammed was a perfect marksman. When we came one morning to our well-ground, and he had his long matchlock in his hand, there sat three crows upon a sidr (apple-thorn) tree, that cumbered our ears with their unlucky krd-krd. " The cursed ones ! " quoth Amm Mohammed, and making ready his gun, he said he would try if his eyesight were failing : as he levelled the crows flew up, but one sat on, — through which he shot his bullet from a wonderful distance. Then he set up a white bone on the clay wall, it was large as the palm of my hand, and he shot his ball through the midst from an hundred paces. He shot again, and his lead pierced the border of the former hole ! Mohammed gave the crow to some Kheyabara, who came to look on ; and the negro villagers, kindling a fire of palm sticks, roasted their bird whole, and parted it among them. — " Like will to like ! quoth the Nejumy, and for them it is good enough." He had this good shooting of an uncommon eyesight, which was such, that very often he could see the stars at noonday : his brother, he said, could see them, and so could many more. He told me he had seen, by moments, three or four little stars about one of the wandering stars, [Jupiter's moons !] I asked then, "Sawest thou never a wandering star horned like the moon ? " — " Well, I have seen a star not always round, but like a blade hanging in the heaven." — Had this vision been in BLOOD-MONEY 31 European star-gazers, the Christian generations had not so long waited for the tube of Galileo ! [to lay the first stone — hewn without hands — of the indestructible building of our sen-rices]. Mohammrd saw the moon always very large, and the whole body at once : he was become in his elder years long- sighted. * * * * * * The remembrance of their younger brother, who had been slain by robbers as he came in a company from Medina to visit his brethren at Kheybar, was yet a burning anguish in Mohammed's breast; — until, with his own robust hands, he might be avenged for the blood! A ghrazzu of Monyora, Billi Aarab, and five times their number, had set upon them in the way : the younger Nejumy, who was in the force of his years, played the lion amongst them, until he fell by a pistol shot. M6ngora men come not to Kheybar; therefore Mohammed devised in his heart that in what place he might first meet with any tribesman of theirs, he would slay him. A year after, he finding one of them, the Nejumy led him out, with some pretence, to a desert place ; and said shortly to him there, " 0 thou cursed one ! now will I slay thee with this sword." — " Akhs ! said the Beduwy, let me speak, Sir, why wilt thou kill me ? did I ever injure thee ? " — " But thou diest to-day, for the blood of my brother, whom some of you in a ghrazzu have slain, in the way to Kheybar." — " The Lord is my witness ! that I had no hand in it, for I was not among them." — " Yet shall thy blood be for his blood, since thou art one of them." — "Nay, hear me, Mohammed en-Nejumy ! and I will tell thee the man's name, — yea by Him which created us ! for the man is known to me who did it ; and he is one under my hand. Spare now my life, and as the Lord liveth I will make satisfaction, in constraining him that is guilty, and in putting-to of mine own, to the estimation of the niidda, 800 reals." Mohammed, whose effort is short, could no more find in his cooling mood to slaughter a man that had never displeased him. He said then, that he forgave him his life, upon this promise to send him the blood-money. So they made the covenant, and Mohammed let him go. — "That cursed Belluwy ! I never saw him more (quoth he), but now, — ha! wheresoever I may meet with any of them, I will kill him." I dissuaded him — " But there is a wild-fire in my heart, which cannot be appeased till I be avenged for the death of my brother." — " Were it not better if you take any of their tribesmen, to bind him until the blood be redeemed ? " But Amm Mohammed could not hear this; the (South) Arabian 32 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA custom is not to hold men over to ransom : but 'either they kill their prisoner outright, or, giving him a girby with water and God's curse, they let him go from them. " Ruhli, they will say, depart thou enemy! and perish, may it please God, in the khala." They think that a freeman is no chattel and cannot be made a booty. Women are not taken captive in the Arabian warfare, though many times a poor valiant man might come by a fair wife thus, without his spending for bride money. Mohammed answered, "But now I am rich — the Lord be praised therefore, what need have I of money? might I but quench this heart-burning ! " — " Why not forgive it freely, that the God of Mercies may forgive thee thy offences." — " Sayest thou this ! — and sheykh Khalil I did a thing in my youth, for which my heart reproaches me ; but thou who seemest to be a man of (religious) learning declare unto me, whether I be guilty of that blood. — The Bashy Bazuk rode [from Medina] against the Ateyba, and I was in the expedition. We took at first much booty : then the Beduw, gathering from all sides [they have many horsemen], began to press upon us, and our troop [the soldiers ride but slowly upon Syrian hackneys] abandoned the cattle. The Aarab coming on and shooting in our backs, there fell always some among us ; but especially there was a marksman who infested us. He rode upon a mare, radif, and his fellow carried him out galloping on our flank and in ad- vance : then that marksman alighted, behind some bush, and awaited the time to fire his shot. When he fired, the horse- man, who had halted a little aloof, galloped to take him up : they galloped further, and the marksman loaded again. At every shot of his there went down horse or rider, and he killed my mare : then the aga bade his own slave take me up on his horse's croup. 'Thou 0 young man, said he, canst shoot, gallop forth with my lad and hide thee ; and when thou seest thy time, shoot that Ateyby, who will else be the death of us all.' — ' Wellah Captain, I would not be left on my feet, the troop might pass from me.' — ' That shall not be, only do this which I bid thee.' " We hastened forward, said Mohammed, when those Beduins came by on the horse : we rode to some bushes, and there I dismounted and loaded carefully. The marksman rode beyond and went to shroud himself as before ; he alighted, and I was ready and shot at the instant. His companion who saw him wounded, galloped to take him up, and held him in his arms on the saddle, a little while ; and then cast him down, — he was dead ! and the Arabs left pursuing us." I asked, ' Wherefore, if he doubted to kill an enemy in the field, had he taken service BAM IV i;A/J K KXl'EDITIO: 33 with the soldiery ? ' — " All ! it was lor t6ma : I was yet young and ignorant." Ainin Mohammed lirul tlio blood of another sucli man- slaughter on his mind ; but lie spoke of it without discomfort. In a new raid lie pursued a Beduwy lad \vlio was Hying on foot, to take his matchlock from him, — which might be worth twelve reals; the weled, seeing himself overtaken by a horseman of the Dowla, fired back his gun from the hip, and the ball passed through the calf of Mohammed's leg, who ' answered the inelaun, as he said, trawf ! — with a pistol shot: the young tribesman fell grovelling, beating his feet, and wallowed matching the sand in dying throes. Mohammed's leg grew cold, and only then he felt himself to be wounded : he could not dismount, but called a friend to take up the Beduwy's gun for him. Mohammed's father (who was in the expedition) cut off his horseman's boot, which was full of blood, and bound up the hurt : and set him upon a provision camel and brought him home to Medina ; and his wound was whole in forty days. He showed me also that a bone had been shot away of his left wrist ; that was in after years. — Amm Mohammed was coming up in a convoy of tradesmen from Medina, with ten camel-loads of clothing for Kheybar. As they journeyed, a strong ghrazzu of Harb met with them : then the passengers drove their beasts at a trot, and they themselves hasting as they could on foot, with their guns, fired back against the enemies. They ran thus many miles in the burning sun, till their strength began to give out and their powder was almost spent. The Beduw had by this taken the most of the trades- men's loaded camels. Mohammed had quitted his own and the camel of a companion, when a ball shattered the bone of his left forearm. " I saw him, he said, who shot it ! I fired at the melaun again, and my bullet broke all his hand." — The Aarab called now to the Nejumy (knowing him to be of their kindred), " What ho ! Mohammed son of our sister ! return without fear, and take that which is thine of these camels." He answered them, " I have delivered mine already, "and they, " Go in peace." — I asked " How, being a perfect marksman, he had not, in an hour, killed all the pursuers." — " But know, Klialil, that in this running and fighting we fire almost without taking sight." * * * * The delay of Abdullah's messenger to Medina, was a cloud big with discomfort to me in this darkness of Kheybar. One morning I said to Amm Mohammed at our well-labour, VOL. II. C 34: WANDERINGS IN ARABIA " What shall I do if ill news arrive to-day ? Though yon put this sword in my hands, I could not fight against three hundred." — " Sit we down, said the good man, let us consider, Khalil : and now thou hast said a word, so truly, it has made my heart ache, and I cannot labour more ; kf/ak, let us home to the house," — though half an hour was not yet spent. — He was very silent, when we sat again in his snffa : and " Look, he said, Khalil, if there come an evil tiding from the Pasha, I will redeem thee from Abdullah — at a price, wellah as a man buys a slave ; it shall be with my mare, she is worth sixty reals, and Abdullah covets her. He is a melaun, a very cursed one, Khalil ; — and then I will mount thee with some Beduins, men of my trust, and let thee go." — " I like not the felon looks of Abdullah." — " I will go and sound him to-day ; I shall know his mind, for he will not hide anything from me. And Khalil, if I see the danger instant I will steal thee away, and put thee in a covert place of the Harra, where none may find thee ; and leave with thee a girby and dates, that thou mayest be there some days in security, till news be come from Medina, and I can send for thee, or else I may come to thee myself." The day passed heavily : after supper the good man rose, and taking his sword and his mantle, and leaving me in the upper chamber, he said he would go and ' feel the pulse of the melann' : he was abroad an hour. The strong man entered again with the resolute looks of his friendly worth : and sitting down, as after a battle, he said, " Khalil, there is no present danger ; and Abdullah has spoken a good word for thee to-day, — * Khalil, it seems, does not fear Ullah; he misdoubts me, and yet I have said it already, — if the Pasha write to me to cut off KhaliPs head, that I will mount him upon a thelul and let him go ; and we will set our seals to paper, and I will take witness of all the people of Kheybar, — to what ? that Khalil broke out of the prison and escaped. — Tell Khalil, I have not forgotten es-Sham and Jidda ; and that I am not afraid of a Pasha, who as he came in yesterday may be recalled to-morrow, but of Stambul, and wellah for my own life.' ' The post arrived in the night. Mohammed heard of it, and went over privily to Dakhil's house, to enquire the news. " There is only this, said the messenger, that the Pasha sends now for his books." On the morrow I was summoned to Abdullah, who bade sheykh Salih read me the Medina governor's letter, where only was written shortly, " Send all the stranger's books, and the paper which he brought with him from Ibn Rashid ; you are to send the cow also." The Siruan bade me go with his THE ENGLEYS OF THE SI I \!.LK<;IAN< K hostess to a closet where my bags lay, and bring out tin- hooks and papers, and leave nob one remaining. This I did, only asking him to spare my loose papers, since the Pasha had not expressly demanded them, — but he would not. I said, " I will also write to the Pasha ; and here is my English passport which I will send with the rest." "No! " he cried, to my astonish- ment, with a voice of savage rage ; and ' for another word he would break his chibuk over my head ', he cursed me, and cursed "the Engleys, and the father of the Engleys." — The villain would have struck me, but he feared the Nejumy and Dakhil, who were present. "Ha, it is thus, I exclaimed, that thou playest with my life ! " Then an hideous tempest burst from the slave's black mouth ; " This Nasrany ! he yelled, who lives to-day only by my benefit, will chop words with me ; Oh wherefore with my pistol, wherefore, I say, did I not blow out his brains at the first ? — wellah as ever I saw thee ! " Amm Mohammed as we came home said, " Abdullah is a melaun indeed ; and, but we had been there, thou hadst not escaped him to-day." — How much more brutish I thought in my heart had been the abandonment of the Levantine con- sulate ! that, with a light heart, had betrayed my life to so many cruel deaths ! Even Amm Mohammed heard me with impatience, when I said to him that we were not subject to the Sultan. — The Sultan, who is Khcdif (calif ), successor to the apostle of Ullah, is the only lawful lord, they think, of the whole world ; and all who yield him no obedience are dsytn, revolted peoples and rebels. The good man was sorry to hear words savouring, it seemed to him, of sedition, in the mouth of Khalil. He enquired, had we learned yet in our (outlying) countries to maintain bands of trained soldiery, such as are the askars of the Sooltan ? I answered, that our arts had armed and instructed the Ottoman service, and that without us they would be naked. " It is very well, he responded, that the Engleys, since they be not asyin, should labour for the Sooltan." When I named the countries of the West, he enquired if there were not Moslemin living in some of them. I told him, that long ago a rabble of Moghrebies had invaded and possessed themselves of the florid country of Andalus. — Andalusia was a glorious province of Islam : the Arabian plant grew in the Titanic soil of Europe to more excellent temper and stature ; and there were many "bull/id voices among them, in that land of the setting sun, gladdened with the genial wine. Yet the Arabs decayed in the fruition of that golden soil, and the robust nephews of them whom their forefathers had dispos- 36 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA sessed, descending from the mountains, reconquered their own country. As I said this, " Wellah guwiyin ! then they must be a strong people, answered Amrn Mohammed. Thou, Khalil, hast visited many lands ; and wander where thou wilt, since it is thy list, only no more in the Peninsula of the Arabs (Jezirat el-Arab). Thou hast seen already that which, may suffice thee ; and what a lawless waste land it is ! and perilous even for us who were born there ; and what is this people's ignorance and their intolerance of every other religion. Where wilt thou be when God have delivered thee out of these troubles? that if ever I come into those parts I might seek thee. Tell me where to send my letter, if ever I would write to thee ; and if ' I inscribe it Shei/kh Khalil, Bded el-Enqleys, will that find thee?" " Here is paper, a reed, and ink : Abdullah would not have thee write to the Pasha; but write thou, and I will send the letter by Dakhil who will not deny me, and he returns to- morrow. See, in writing to the Pasha, that thou lift him up with many high-sounding praises." — " I shall write but plainly, after my conscience." — " Then thou art mejnun, and that con- science is not good, which makes thee afraid to help thyself in a danger." — " Tell me, is the Pasha a young man of sudden counsels, or a spent old magistrate of Stambul ? " — " He is a grey-beard of equitable mind, a reformer of the official service, and for such he is unwelcome to the ill-deserving. Yet I would have thee praise him, for thus must we do to obtain anything ; the more is the pity." I wrote with my pencil in English, — for Mohammed told me there are interpreters at Medina. I related my coming down with the Haj, from Syria, to visit Medain Salih ; and, that I had since lived with the Beduw, till I went, after a year, to Hayil ; from whence Ibn Rashid, at my request, had sent me hither. I complained to the Pasha- governor of this wrongful detention at Kheybar, in spite of my passport from a Waly of Syria ; also certain Beduins of the Dowla coming in, who knew me, had witnessed to the truth of all that I said. I demanded therefore that I might proceed upon my journey and be sent forward with sure persons. I was sitting in the soldiers' kahwa, when Abdullah wrote his new letter to the Pasha, " My humble duty to your lord- ship : I send now the stranger's books and papers. I did send the cow to your lordship by some Aarab going down to Medina ; but the cow broke from them, and ran back to Khey- bar : she is now sick, and therefore I may not yet send her." — " Hast thou written all this, sheykh Salih ? — he will not be much longer, please Ullah, Bashat el-Medina; for they say ENCHANTMKN 37 another is coining." No man ln-nring liis fable could forbear laughing; only the Sinnm looked sadly upon it, for the cow yielded him every day a bowlful of milk, in this low time at Kheybar. Abdullah set his seal to the letters, and delivered them to Dakhil, who <It'i>:ut«'<l before noon. Amm Mohammed, as he was going, put a piece of silver (from me) in Dakhil's hand, and cast my letter, with my British passport, into the worthy man's budget, upon his back, who feigned thus that he did not see it : the manly villager was not loath to aid n stranger (and a public guest,) whom he saw oppressed in his village by the criminal tyranny of Abdullah. His inditing the letter to Medina had unsettled Abdullah's brains, so that he fell again into his fever : " Help me quickly ! he cries, where is thy book, sheykh Salih ; and you Beduins sitting here, have ye not some good remedies in the desert? " Siilib pored over his wise book, till he found him a new caudle and enchantment. — Another time I saw Salih busy to cure a mangy thelfil ; he sat with a bowl of water before him, and mumbling thereover he spat in it, and mumbled solemnly and spat many times ; and after a half hour of this work the water was taken to the sick beast to drink. — Spitting (a despiteful civil defilement) we have seen to be some great matter in their medicine. — Is it, that they spit thus against the malicious jftn ? Parents bid their young children spit upon them : an Arabian father will often softly say to the infant son in his arms, " Spit upon babu ! spit them, my darling." CHAPTER III GALLA-LAND. MEDINA LORE MANY night hours when we could not sleep, I spent in dis- coursing with my sick Galla comrade, the poor friendly-minded Aman. When I enquired of the great land of the Gallas, " El-Hdbasli" quoth he, is the greatest empire of the werld ; for who is there a Sooltan to be compared with the Sooltan of el-Habash ! " — " Well, we found but a little king, on this side, when the Engleys took his beggarly town, Mdgdala" — Aman bethought him, that in his childhood when he was brought down with the slave drove they had gone by this Magdala. * That king, he said, could be no more than a governor or pasha ; for the great Sooltan, whose capital is at the distance of a year's journey, where he inhabits a palace of ivory. The governors and lieutenants of his many provinces gather an imperial tribute, — that is at no certain time ; but as it were once in three or four years.' This fable is as much an article of faith with all the Gallas, as the legend which underlies our most beliefs ; and may rise in their half-rational conscience of a sort of inarticulate argu- ment : — * Every soil is subject to rulers, there is therefore a Euler of Galla-land, — Galla-land the greatest country in all the world ; but the Sultan of the greatest land is the greatest Sultan : also a Sultan inhabits richly, therefore that greatest Sultan inhabits the riches of the (African) world, and his palace is all of ivory ! ' Aman said, ' The country is not settled in vil- lages ; but every man's house is a round dwelling of sticks and stubble, large and well framed, in the midst of his ground, which he has taken up of the hill-lands about him. Such faggot- work may stand many years [; but is continually in danger to be consumed by fire, in a moment]. They break and sow as much soil as they please ; and their grain is not measured for the abundance. They have great wealth of kine, so that he is called a poor man whose stock is only two or three hundred. THE GALLAS' MANNER OF UKU Tlu-ir oxen are big-bodi»-d, and have great horns: the Gallas milk only so many of their cattle as may suffice them for drinking and for butter; they drink beer also, which tlu-y in, -ike of their plenty of corn. Though it be a high and hilly land, a loin-cloth [as anciently in the Egyptian and Ethiopian countries] is their only garment; but such is the equal temper of the air that they need no more. The hot summer never grieves them ; in the winter they feel none other than a whole- some freshness. In their country are lions, but Ullah's mercy has slaked the raging of those terrible wild beasts ; for the lions sicken cc<rif other day with fever, and else they would destroy the icorld ! The lions slaughter many of their cattle ; but to man- kind they do no hurt or rarely. A man seeing a lion in the path should hold his way evenly without faintness of heart, and so pass by him ; not turning his eyes to watch the lion, for that would waken his anger. There are elephants and giraffes ; their horses are of great stature.' — I have heard from the slave drivers that a horse may be purchased in the Galla country for (the value of) a real ! ' In Galla-land there is no use of money ; the people, he said, have no need to buy anything : they receive foreign trifles from the slave dealers, as beads and the little round in-folding tin mirrors. Such are chiefly the wares which the drivers bring with them, — besides salt, which only fails them in that largess of heaven which is in their country. A brick of salt, the load of a light porter, is the price of a slave among them. That salt is dug at Suakim (by the Red Sea, nearly in face of Jidda), six months distant. The Gallas are hospitable to strangers, who may pass, where they will, through their country. When there is warfare between neighbour tribes, the stranger is safe in what district he is ; but it* he would pass beyond, he must cross the infested border, at his peril, to another tribe ; and he will again be in surety among them. The Galla country is very open and peaceable ; and at what cottage the stranger may alight, he is received to their plenteous hospitality. They ask him whether he would drink of their ale or of their milk V Some beast is slaughtered, and they will prive him the flesh, which he can cook for himself, [since the Gallas are raw-flesh eaters]. ' They have wild coffee trees in their country, great as oaks ; and that coffee is the best : the bean is very large. They take up the fallen berries from the ground, and roast them, with samn. Coffee is but for the elders' drinking, and that seldom : they think it becomes not their young men to use the pithless caudle drink. The women make butter, rocking the milk in the 40 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA shells of great gourds : they store all their drink in such vessels. Grain-gold may be seen in the sand of the torrents ; but there are none who gather it. Among them [as in Arabia] is a smiths' caste ; the Galla people mingle not with them in wedlock. The smiths receive payment for their labour, in cattle.' I did not ascertain from Aman what is their religion : ' he could not tell ; they pray, he said, and he thought that they turn them- selves toward Mecca.' He could not remember that they had any books among them. Aman had been stolen, one afternoon as he kept his father's neat, by men from a neighbour tribe. The raiders went the same night to lodge in a cottage, where lived a widow woman. When the good woman had asked the captive boy of his parent- age, she said to the guests, that the child's kindred were her acquaintance, and she would redeem him with an hundred oxen ; but they would not. A few days later he was sold to the slave dealer : and began to journey in the drove of boys and girls, to be sold far off in a strange land. These children with the cap- tive young men and maidens march six months, barefoot, to the Red Sea: the distance may be 1200 miles. Every night they come to a station of the slave-drivers, where they sup of flesh meat and the country beer. Besides the aching weariness of that immense foot-journey, they had not been mishandled. ' Of what nation were the slave drivers ? ' — this he could not answer : they were white men, and in his opinion Moslemin ; but not Arabians, since they were not at home at Jidda, which was then, and is now, the staple town of African slavery, for the Turkish Empire : — Jidda where are Prankish consuls ! But you shall find these worthies, in the pallid solitude of their palaces, affecting (great Heaven !) the simplicity of new-born babes,— they will tell you, they are not aware of it ! But I say again, in your ingenuous ears, Jidda is the staple town of the Turkish slavery, OR ALL THE MOSLEMIN ARE LIARS. — At length they came down to the flood of the Nile, which lay in a great deep of the mountains, and were ferried over upon a float of reeds and blown goat-skins. Their journey, he said, is so long because of the hollowness of the country. For they often pass valley-deeps, where, from one brow, the other seems not very far off ; yet in descending and ascending they march a day or two to come thither. Their aged men in Galla-land use to say, that * the Nile comes streaming to them in deep crooked valleys, from bare and unknown country many months distant.' " Aman, when I am free, go we to Galla-land ! it will not be there as here, where for one cow we would give our left hands ! " WARFARK ON TIM- OALU BORDKi: -II The poor (lalla h;ul rais.-d himsrlf upon his dhow, with a, mflan- choly distraction, and smiling he seemed to see his country again : he told nu>. his own name in the Galla tongue, when he was a child, in his (lalla home. I asked if no anger was left in his heart, against those who had stolen and sold his life to ser- vitude, in the ends of the earth. " Yet one thing, sheykh Khali 1, has recompensed me, — that I remained not in ignorance with the heathen ! — Oh the wonderful providence of Ullah ! whereby I am come to this country of the Apostle, and to the knowledge of the religion ! Ah, mightest thou be partaker of the same ! — yet I know that is all of the Lord's will, and this also shall be, in God's good time ! " He told me that few Gallas ever return to their land, when they have recovered their freedom. — " And wilt thou return, Aman ? " " Ah ! he said, my body is grown now to another temper of the air, and to another manner of living." There is continual warfare on the Galla border with the (hither) Abyssinians ; and therefore the Abyssinians suffer none to go over with their fire-arms to the Gallas. The Gallas are war- like, and armed with spear and shield they run furiously upon their enemies in battle. — In the Gallas is a certain haughty gentleness of bearing, even in land of their bondage. Aman told me the tale of his life, which slave and freed-man he had passed in the Hejaz. He was sometime at Jidda, a custom-house watchman on board ships lying in the road ; the most are great barques carrying Bengal rice, with crews of that country under English captains. Aman spoke with good re- membrance of the hearty hospitality of the " Nasara " seamen. One day, he watched upon a steamship newly arrived from India, and among her passengers was a " Nasrany ", who " sat weeping — weeping, and his friends could not appease him ". Aman, when he saw his time, enquired the cause; and the stranger answered him afflictedly, " Eigh me ! I have asked of the Lord, that I might visit the City of His Holy House, and become a Moslem : is not Mecca yonder ? Help me, thou good Moslem, that I may repair thither, and pray in the sacred places ! — but ah ! these detain me." When it was dark Aman hailed a wherry ; and privily he sent this stranger to land, and charged the boatman for him. The Jidda waterman set his fare on shore ; and saw him mounted upon an ass, for Mecca, — one of those which are driven at a run, in a night-time, the forty and five miles or more be- twixt the port town and the Holy City. — When the new day was dawning, the "Frenjy" entered Mecca! Some citizens, the first he met, looking earnestly upon the stranger stayed to 42 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA ask him, " Sir, what brings thee hither ? — being it seems a Nasrany ! " He answered them, " I was a Christian, and I have required it of the Lord, — that I might enter this Holy City and become a Moslem ! " Then they led him, with joy, to their houses, and circumcised the man : and that renegade or traveller was years after dwelling in Mecca, and in Medina. — Am an thought his godfathers had made a collection for him ; and that he was become a tradesman in the suk. — Who may interpret this and the like strange tales ? which we may often hear related among them ! Aman drank the strong drink which was served out with his rations on shipboard; and in his soldiering life he made (secretly) with his comrade, a spirituous water, letting boiled rice fer- ment : the name of it is sitbiat and in the Hejaz heat they think it very refreshing. But the unhappy man thus continually wounding his conscience, in the end had corroded his infirm health also, past remedy. — When first he received the long arrears of his pay, he went to the slave dealers in Jidda, and bought himself a maiden, of his own people, to wife, for fifty dollars. — They had but a daughter between them : and another time, when he removed from Mecca to Jidda, the child fell from the camel's back ; and of that hurt she died. Aman seemed not, in the remembrance, to feel a father's pity ! His wife wasted all that ever he brought home, and after that he put her away : then she gained her living as a seamstress, but died within a while ; — "the Lord, he said, have mercy upon her ! " — When next he received his arrears, he remained one year idle at Mecca, drinking and smoking away his slender thrift in the coffee houses, until nothing was left ; and then he entered this Ageyl service. The best moments of his life, up and down in the Hejaz, he had passed at Tayif. " Eigh ! how beautiful (he said) is et- Tayif ! " He spoke with reverent affection of the Great-sherif [he died about this time], a prince of a nature which called forth the perfect good will of all who served him. Aman told with wonder of the sherif's garden [the only garden in Desert Arabia !] at Tayif, and of a lion there in a cage, that was meek only to the sherif. All the Great-sherif's wives, he said, were Galla women ! He spoke also of a certain beneficent widow at Tayif, whose bountiful house stands by the wayside ; where she receives all passengers to the Arabian hospitality. Since his old " uncle " was dead, Aman had few more hopes for this life, — he was now a broken man at the middle age ; and yet he hoped in his " brother ". This was no brother by " THE NASARA ARE BORN OF THE SKA " 43 nature, but a negro once his it-How servant : and such are by the benign custom of the Arabian household accounted brethren, lie heard that his negro brother, now a freed-imm, was living at .lerusnK'in ; and he had a mind to go up to Syria and seek him, if the Lord would enable him. Amun was dying of a slow con- sumption and a vesical malady, of the great African continent, little known in our European art of medicine : — and who is infirm at Kheybar, he is likely to die. This year there remained only millet for sick persons' diet : " The [foster] God forgive me, said poor Amfm, that I said it is as wood to eat." With the pensive looks of them who see the pit before their feet, in the midst of their days, he sat silent, wrapt in his mantle, all day in the sun, and drank tobacco. — One's life is full of harms, who is a sickly man, and his fainting heart of impotent ire, which alienates, alas ! even the short human kindness of the few friends about him. At night the poor Galla had no covering from the cold ; then he rose every hour and blew the fire and drank tobacco. The wives of the Kheyabara were very charitable to the poor soldiery : it is a hospitable duty of the Arabian hareem towards all lone strangers among them. For who else should fill a man's girby at the spring, or grind his corn for him, and bring in fire- wood ? None offer them silver for this service, because it is of their hospitality. Only a good wife serving some welfaring stranger, as Ahmed, is requited once or twice in the year with a new gown-cloth and a real or two, which he may be willing to give her. Our neighbour's wife, a goodly young negress, served the sick Amau, only of her womanly pity, and she sat ofttimes to watch by him in our suffa. Then Jummar (this was her name) gazed upon me with great startling eyes ; such a strange- ness and terror seemed to her to be in this name ' Nasrany ' ! One day she said, at length, A ndakom hareem, ft? f be there women in your land ? ' — " Ullah ! (yes forsooth), mothers, daughters and wives ; — am I not the son of a woman : or dost thou take me, silly woman, forwcled cth-thtb, a son of the wolf?" — " Yes, yes, I thought so : but wellah, Khalil, be the Nasara born as we ? ye rise not then — out of the sea ! " — When I told this tale to Amm Mohammed he laughed at their fondness. " So they would make thee, Khalil, another kind of God's creature, the sea's offspring ! this foolish people babble without understanding themselves when they say SEA : their * sea ' is they could not tell what kind of monster ! " And Jummar meeting us soon after in the street, must hang her bonny floe head to the loud mirth of Amm Mohammed : for whom I was hereafter welcd cth-thib; and if I were any time unready at his 44 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA dish, he would say pleasantly, "Khalil, them art not then weled eth-thib I " A bystander said one day, as I was rolling up a flag of rock from our mine, Met fi hail, ' there is no strength.* Mohammed answered, " Nevertheless we have done somewhat, for there helped me the son of the wolf." "I am no wolfling, I exclaimed, but weyladak, a son of thine." "Wellah! answered the good man, surprised and smiling, thou art my son indeed." Kurds, Albanians, Gallas, Arabs, Negroes, Nasrany, we were many nations at Kheybar. One day a Beduwy oaf said at Abdullah's hearth, " It is wonderful to see so many diversities of mankind ! but what be the Nasara ? — for since they are not of Islam, they cannot be of the children of Adam." I answered, " There was a prophet named Noah, in whose time God drowned the world ; but Noah with his sons Sem, Ham, Yafet, and their wives, floated in a vessel : they are the fathers of mankind. The Kurdies, the Turks, the Engleys, are of Yafet ; you Arabs are children of Sem ; and you the Kheyabara, are of Ham, and this Bishy." — " Akhs ! (exclaimed the fellow) and thou speak such a word again — ! " Abdullah : "Be not sorry, for I also (thy captain) am of Ham." The Bishy, a negro Ageyly, was called by the name of his country (in el- Yemen) the W. Bishy [in the opinion of some Oriental scholars " the river Pison " of the Hebrew scriptures, v. Die alte Geographic Arabiens], It is from thence that the sherif of Mecca draws the most of his (negro) band of soldiery, — called therefore el-Bishy^ and they are such as the Ageyl. This Yemany spoke nearly the Hejaz vulgar, in which is not a little base metal ; so that it sounds churlish-like in the dainty ears of the inhabitants of Nejd. We heard again that Muharram lay sick ; and said Abdullah, "Go to him, Khalil ; he was much helped by your former medicines." — I found Muharram bedrid, with a small quick pulse : it was the second day he had eaten nothing ; he had fever and visceral pains, and would not spend for necessary things. I persuaded him to boil a chicken, and drink the broth with rice, if he could not eat ; and gave him six grains of rhubarb with one of laudanum powder, and a little quinine, to be taken in the morning. The day after I was not called. I had been upon the Harra with Amm Mohammed, and was sitting at night in our chamber with Aman : we talked late, for, the winter chillness entering t our open casement, we could not soon sleep. About mid- night we were startled by an untimely voice ; one called loudly in the corner of our place, to other askars who lodged there, MUIAUUAArs DKATII * Abel u 11. -ill bad*1 them come to him.' All was horror at Khcybar, ,iiid I thought tlie post mi^ht bo arrived i'rom Mediim, with an order for my execution. I spoke to Amdn, who sat up blowing the embers, to lean out of the casement and fn<|uin- of them what it was. Arnau looking out said, EIJ l.lnihar, yd, 'Ho, there, what tidings?' They answered him Horn.-what, and said Annul, withdrawing his head, " Ulhih, i/nrkamliu, 'May the Lord have mercy upon him,' — they say Muliarram is dead, and they are sent to provide for his burial, and for the custody of his goods.' — " I have lately given him medicines ! and what if this graceless people now say, ' Khalil killed him ' ; if any of them come now, we will make fast the door, and do thou lend me thy musket." — " Khalil, said the infirm man sitting at the fire, trust in the Lord, and if thou have done no evil, fear not : what hast thou to do with this people ? they are hounds, apes, oxen, and their hareem are witches : but lie down again and sleep." I went in the morning to the soldiers' kahwa and found only the Siruan, who then arrived from Muharram's funeral. " What is this ? Khalil, cries he, Muharram is dead, and they say it was thy medicines : now, if thou know not the medicines, give no more to any man. — They say that you have killed him, and they tell me Muharram said this before he died. [I after- wards ascertained from his comrades that the unhappy man had not spoken at all of my medicines.] Mohammed el-Kurdy says that after you had given him the medicine you rinsed your hands in warm water." I exclaimed in my haste, " Mohammed lies ! " — a perilous word. In the time of my being in Syria, a substantial Christian was violently drawn by the Mohammed people of Tripoli, where he lived, before the kady, only for this word, uttered in the common hearing ; and he had but spoken it of his false Moslem servant, whose name was Mohammed. The magistrate sent him, in the packet boat, to be judged at Beyrut ; but we heard that in his night passage, of a few hours, the Christian had been secretly thrust over- board ! — Abdullah looked at me with eyes which said ' It is death to blaspheme the Neby ! ' — "Mohammed, I answered, the Kurdy, lies, for he was not present." — " I cannot tell, Khalil, Abdullah said at last with gloomy looks, the, man is dead ; then give no more medicines to any creatnn ; " and the askars now entering, he said to them, " Khalil is ai- anirry man, for this cause of Muharram ; — speak we of other matter." There came up Mohammed the Kurdy and the Egyptian : they had brought over the dead and buried man's goods, who yesterday at this time was living amongst them ! — his pallet, 46 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA his clothes, his red cap, his water-skin. Abdullah sat down to the sale of them ; also, 2|- reals were said to be owing for the corpse-washing and burying. Abdullah enquired, ' What of Muharram's money ? for all that he had must be sent to his heirs ; and has he not a son in Albania ? ' The dead man's comrades swore stoutly, that they found not above ten reals in his girdle. Sinlr : " He had more than fifty ! Muharram was rich." The like said others of them (Aman knew that he had as much as seventy reals). Abdullah : " Well, I will not enter into nice reckonings; — enough, if we cannot tell what has become of his money. — Who will buy this broidered coat, that is worth ten reals at Medina ? " One cried " Half a real." Sirtir : " Three quarters ! " A villager : " I will give two krush more." Abdullah : " Then none of you shall have this ; I reserve it for his heirs. What comes next ? a pack of cards : — (and he said with his Turkish smiles) Muharram whilst he lived won the most of his money thus, mesquin ! — who will give any- thing?— I think these were made in Khalil's country. The picture upon them [a river, a wood, and a German church] is what, Khalil ? Will none buy ?— then Khalil shall have them." — " I would not touch them." They were bidding for the sorry old gamester's wretched blanket and pallet, and contending for his stained linen when I left them. If a deceased person be named in the presence of pious Mohammedans they will respond, * May the Lord have mercy upon him ! ' but meeting with Ahmed in the path by the burial ground, he said, " Muharram is gone, and he owed me two reals, may Ullah confound him ! " — I was worn to an extremity ; and now the malevolent barked against my life for the charity which I had shown to Muharram ! Every day Aly the ass brayed in the ass's ears of Abdullah, * It was high time to put to death the adversary of the religion, also his delaying [to kill me] was sinful : ' and he alleged against me the death of Muharram. I saw the Siruan's irresolute black looks grow daily more dangerous : " Ullah knows, I said to the Nejumy, what may be brooding in his black heart : a time may come when, the slave's head turning, he will fire his pistols on me." — " Thou earnest here as a friend of the Dowla, and what cause had this ass-in-office to meddle at all in thy matter, and to make thee this torment ? Wellah if he did me such wrong, since there is none other remedy in our country, I would kill him and escape to the Ferra." Amm Mohammed declared publicly ' His own trust in sheykh Khalil to be such that if I bade him drink even a thing venomous, he would drink it ; ' and the like said Aman, who did not cease to use my remedies. The better A DOWLAT EXPEDITION TO KK-IMATH 47 sort of Kheyabara now said, that ' Muharram was not dead of my medicines, but come to the end of his days, he departed by the decree of Ullah.' * * * * * * Mohammed had ridden westward, in the Bashy Bazfik expeditions as far as Yanba ; he had ridden in Nejd with Turkish troops to the Wahuby capital, er-Rifith. That was for some quarrel of the sherif of Mecca : they lay encamped before the Nejd city fifteen days, and if Ibn Saud had not yielded their demands, they would have besieged him. The army marched over the khala, with cannon, and provision camels ; and he said they found water in the Beduin wells for all the cattle, and to fill their girbies. The Arabian deserts may be passed by armies strong enough to disperse the resistance of the frenetic but unwarlike inhabitants ; but they should not be soldiers who cannot endure much and live of a little. The rulers of Egypt made war twenty years in Arabia ; and they failed finally be- cause they came with great cost to possess so poor a country. The Roman army sent by Augustus under Aelius Gallus to make a prey of the chimerical riches of Arabia Felix was 11,000 men, Italians and allies. They marched painfully over the waterless wastes six months ! wilfully misled, as they sup- posed, by the Nabateans of Petra, their allies. In the end of their long marches they took Nejran by assault : six camps further southward they met with a great multitude of the barbarous people assembled against them, at a brookside. In the battle there fell many thousands .of the Arabs ! and of the Romans and allies two soldiers. The Arabians fought, as men unwont to handle weapons, with slings, swords and lances and two-edged hatchets. The Romans, at their furthest, were only two marches from the frankincense country. In returning upwards the general led the feeble remnant of his soldiery, in no more than sixty matches, to the port of el-Hejr. The rest perished of misery in the long and terrible way of the wilderness : only seven Romans had fallen in battle ! — Surely the knightly Roman deserved better than to be afterward dis- graced, because he had not fulfilled the dreams of Caesar's avarice ! Europeans, deceived by the Arabs' loquacity, have in every age a fantastic opinion of this unknown calamitous country. Those Italians looking upon that dire waste of Nature in Arabia, and grudging because they must carry water upon camels, laid all to the perfidy of their guides. The Roman general found the inhabitants of the land * A people unwarlike, half of them helping their living by merchandise, and half of them by robbing ' [such they are now]. Those ancient Arabs 48 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA wore a cap, and let their locks grow to the full length : the most of them cut the beard, leaving the upper lip, others went unshaven. — " The nomads living in tents of hair-cloth are troublesome borderers," says Pliny, [as they are to-day !] Strabo writing from the mouth of Gallus himself, who was his friend and Prefect of Egypt, describes so well the Arabian desert, that it cannot be bettered. "It is a sandy waste, with only few palms and pits of water : the thorn [acacia] and the tamarisk grow there ; the wandering Arabs lodge in tents, and are camel graziers." * * * * * * The Sir u an had bound Amm Mohammed for me, since there was grown this fast friendship between us, saying, "I leave him in thy hands, and of thee I shall require him again ; " — and whenever the Nejumy went abroad I was with him. The villagers have many small kine, which are driven every morn- ing three miles over the figgera, to be herded in a large bottom of wet pasture, the Hdlhal, a part of W. Jellas. I went one day thither with Amm Mohammed, to dig up off-sets in the thickets of unhusbanded young palms. The midst of the valley is a quagmire and springs grown up with canes. The sward is not grass, though it seem such, but a minute herb of rushes. This is the pasture of their beasts ; though the brackish rush grass, swelling in the cud, is unwholesome for any but the home-born cattle. The small Yemen kine, which may be had at Medina for the price of a good sheep, will die here : even the cattle of el-Hayat, bred in a drier upland and valued at twelve to fifteen reals, may not thrive at Kheybar ; and therefore a good Khey- bar cow is worth thirty reals. In the season of their passage plenty of water-fowl are seen in the Halhal, and in summer- time partridges. In these thickets of dry canes the village herd- boys cut their double pipes, mizamtr. Almost daily some head of their stock is lost in the thicket, and must be abandoned when they drive the beasts home at evening ; yet they doubt not to find it on the morrow. The village housewives come barefoot hither in the hot sun to gather palm sticks (for firing). Mohammed cut down some young palm stems, and we dined of the heart or pith-wood, jumm&r, which is very wholesome ; the rude villagers bring it home for a sweetmeat, and call it, in their negro gibes, * Kheybar cheese.' Warm was the winter sun in this place, and in the thirsty heat Amm Mohammed shewed me a pit of water; — but it was full of swimming vermin and I would not drink. "Khalil, said he, we are not THE HURDA 49 so nice," and with lixwilliih-! 1m laid himself down upon his manly breast and drank a hearty draught. In the beginning of the Hiilhal we found scored upon a rock in ancient Arabic letters the words Ma/n't/ cl-Wdi, which was interpreted by our (unlettered) coffee-hearth scholars 'the cattle marches'. A little apart from the way, is a site upon the figgera yet named >'///• cr-lliurallu. There is a spring of their name in Medina; Henakieh pertained of old to that Annezy tribe, (now far in the north) : and ' there be even now some households of their line- age '. Besides kine, there are no great cattle at Kheybar ; the few goats were herded under the palms by children or geyatin. Another day we went upon the Harra for wood. Amm Mohammed, in his hunting, had seen some sere sammara trees ; they were five miles distant. We passed the figgera in the chili of the winter morning and descended to the W. Jellas ; and Haseyn came driving the pack-ass. In the bottom were wide plashes of ice-cold water. " It will cut your limbs, said Moham- med, you cannot cross the water." I found it so indeed ; but they were hardened to these extremities, and the lad helped me over upon his half-drowned beast. Mohammed rode forward upon his mare, and Haseyn drove on under me with mighty strokes, for his father beckoned impatiently. To linger in such places they think perilous, and at every blow the poor lad shrieked to blBJdhash some of the infamous injuries which his father commonly bestowed upon himself ; until we came to the acacia trees. We hurled heavy Harra stones against those dry trunks, and the tree-skeletons fell before us in ruins : — then dashing stones upon them, we beat the timber bones into lengths ; and charged our ass and departed. We held another way homeward, by a dry upland bottom, where I saw ancient walling of field enclosures, under red trachyte bergs, Umm Rukaba, to the Hurda. The Hurda is good corn land, the many ancient wells are sunk ten feet to the basalt rock ; the water comes up sweet and light to drink, but is lukewarm. Here Mohammed had bought a well and corn plot of late, and yesterday he sent hither two lads from the town, to drive his two oxen, saying to them, "Go and help Haseyn in the Hurda." They labour with diligence, and eat no more than the dates of him who bids them ; at night they lie down wrapped in their cloaks upon the damp earth, by a great fire of sammara in a booth of boughs, with the cattle. They remain thus three days out, and the lads drive day and night, by turns. The land-holders send their yokes of oxen to this three-days' labour every fifteen days. * * * VOL. II. D 50 WANDEKINGS IN ARABIA * * * My Galla comrade had been put by Abdullah in the room of the deceased Muharram at Umm Kida ; — for Aman, the freedman of an Albanian petty officer, was accounted of among them as an Albanian deputy petty officer. I returned now at night to an empty house. Abdullah was a cursed man, I might be murdered whilst I slept ; and he would write to the Pasha, 'The Nasrany, it may please your lordship, was found slain such a morning in his lodging, and by persons unknown.' In all the Kheybar cottages is a ladder and open trap to the house- top ; and you may walk from end to end of all the house rows by their terrace roofs, and descend by day or by night at the trap, into what house-chamber you please : thus neighbours visit neighbours. I could not pass the night at the Nejumy's ; for they had but their suffa, so that his son Haseyn went to sleep abroad in a hired chamber, with other young men in the like case. Some householders spread matting over their trap, in the winter night ; but this may be lifted without rumour, and they go always barefoot. There were evil doers not far off, for one night a neighbour's chickens which roosted upon our house terrace had been stolen ; the thief, Aman thought, must be our former Galla comrade : it was a stranger, doubtless, for these black villagers eat no more of their poultry than the eggs ! — This is a superstition of the Kheyabara, for which they themselves cannot render a reason ; and besides they will not eat leeks ! Another day whilst I sat in Ahmed's house there came up Mohammed the Kurdy to coffee. The Kurdy spoke to us with a mocking scorn of Muharram 's death : — in his fatal afternoon, "the sick man said, ( Go Mohammed to Abdullah, for I feel that I am dying and I have somewhat to say to him.' — ' Ana nejjab, am I thy post-runner ? if it please thee to die, what is that to us ? ' — the Egyptian lay sick. In the beginning of the night Muharram was sitting up ; we heard a guggle in his throat, — he sank backward and was dead ! We sent word to Abdullah : who sent over two of the askars, and we made them a supper of the niggard's goods. All Muharram's stores of rice and samn went to the pot ; and we sat feasting in presence of our lord [saint] Muharram, who could not forbid this honest wasting of his substance." — " The niggard's goods are for the fire " (shall be burned in hell), responded those present. I ques- tioned the Kurdy Mohammed, and he denied before them ; and the Egyptian denied it, that my medicines had been so much as mentioned, or cause at all in Muharram's death. — The Kurdy said of the jebal in the horizon of Kheybar, that they were but A SOLDIER'S GRAVE 51 as cottages, in comparison with the mighty mountains of his own country. The sick Ageyly of Boreyda died soon after; but I had «'J from the first to give him medicines, 'lie found the Nasriiuy's remedies (minute doses of rhubarb) so horrible, he said, that he would no more of them.' In one day he died and was buried. But when the morrow dawned we heard in the village, that the soldier's grave had been violated in the night ! — Certain who went by very early had seen the print of women's feet round about the new-made grave. ' And who had done this thing?' asked all the people. "Who, they answered themselves, but the cursed witches ! They have taken up the body, to pluck out the heart of him for their hellish orgies." I passed by later with Amm Mohammed, to our garden labour, and as they had said, so it seemed indeed ! if the prints which we saw were not the footsteps of elvish children. — Aman carried od fat cat to a neighbour woman of ours, and he told me with loathing, that she had eaten it greedily, though she was well-faring, and had store of all things in her bey t ; she was said to be one of the witches ! * * * CHAPTER IV DELIVERANCE FROM KHEYBAR WE looked again for Dakhil, returning from Medina. I spoke to Mohammed to send one to meet him in the way : that were there tidings out against my life (which Dakhil would not hide from us), the messenger might bring us word with speed, and I would take to the Harra. " The Siruan shall be disappointed, answered my fatherly friend, if they would attempt anything against thy life ! Wellah if Dakhil bring an evil word, I have one here ready, who is bound to me, a Beduwy ; and by him I will send thee away in safety." — This was his housewife's brother, a wild grinning wretch, without natural conscience, a notorious camel robber and an homicide. Their father had been a considerable Bishr sheykh ; but in the end they had lost their cattle. This wretch's was the Beduin right of the Halhal, but that yielded him no advantage, and he was become a gatuny at Kheybar ; where his hope was to help himself by cattle-lifting, in the next hostile marches. — Last year seeing some poor stranger in the summer market, with a few ells of new-bought calico, (for a shirt-cloth,) in his hand, he vehemently coveted it for himself. Then he followed that strange tribes- man upon the Harra, and came upon him in the path and murdered him ; and took his cotton, and returned to the village laughing : — he was not afraid of the blood of a stranger ! The wild wretch sat by grinning, when Amm Mohammed told me the tale ; but the housewife said, sighing, "Alas ! my brother is a kafir, so light-headed is he, that he dreads not Ullah." The Nejiimy answered, " Yet the melaun helped our low plight last year, (when there was a dearth at Kheybar) ; he stole sheep and camels, and we feasted many times : — should we leave all the fat to our enemies, and we ourselves perish with hunger ? Sheykh Khalil, say was this lawful for us or haram ? " I thought if, in the next days, I should be a fugitive upon THE PASHA'S MESSAdK the vast lava-field, without shelter from the sun, without known landmarks, with water for less than three days, and infirm in body, what hope had I to live? — A day later Dakliil ;».r rived from Medina, and then, (that which I dreaded,) Amm Moham- med was abroad, to hunt gazelles, upon the Harra; nor had he given me warning overnight, — thus leaving his guest (the A tabs' remiss understanding), in the moment of danger, with- out defence. The Nejumy absent, I could not in a great peril have escaped their barbarous wild hands ; but after some sharp reckoning with the most forward of them I must have fallen in this subbakha soil, without remedy. Ahmed was too ' religious ' to maintain the part of a misbeliever against any mandate from Medina : even though I should sit in his chamber, I thought he would not refuse to undo to the messengers from Abdullah. I sat therefore in Mohammed's suffa, where at the worst I might keep the door until heaven should bring the good man home. — But in this there arrived an hubt of Heteym, clients of his, from the Harra ; and they brought their cheeses and samn to the Nejumy's house, that he might sell the wares for them. Buyers of the black village neighbours came up with them, and Mohammed's door was set open. I looked each moment for the last summons to Abdullah, until nigh mid-day; when Amm Mohammed returned from the Harra, whence he had seen the nomads, far off, descending to Kheybar. — Then the Nejumy sat down among us, and receiving a driving-stick from one of the nomads, he struck their goods and cried, " Who buys this for so much ? " and he set a just price between them : and taking his reed-pen and paper he recorded their bargains, which were for measures of dates to be delivered (six months later), in the harvest. After an hour, Amm Mohammed was again ab leisure ; then having shut his door, he said he would go to Abdullah and learn the news. He returned to tell me that the Pasha wrote thus, " We have now much business with the Haj ; at their departure we will examine and send again the books : in the meanwhile you are to treat the Engleysy honourably and with hospitality." I was summoned to Abdullah in the afternoon : Amm Mohammed went with me, and he carried his sword, which is a strong argument in a valiant hand to persuade men to moderation in these lawless countries. Abdullah repeated that part of the governor's order concerning the books ; of the rest he said nothing. — I afterwards found Dakhil in the street ; he told me he had been privately called to the (Turkish) Pasha, who enquired of him, * What did I wandering in this country, and whether the Nasrany spoke Arabic ? ' (he spoke it very well himself). Dakhil 54 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA found him well disposed towards me : he heard also in Medina that at the coming of the Haj, Mohammed Said Pasha, being asked by the Pasha-governor, if he knew me, responded, * He had seen me at Damascus, and that I came down among the Haj to Medain Salih ; and he wondered to hear that I was in captivity at Kheybar, a man known to be an Engleysy and who had no guilt towards the Dowla, other than to have been always too adventurous to wander in the (dangerous) nomadic countries.' The few weeks of winter had passed by, and the teeming spring heat was come, in which all things renew themselves : the hamim month would soon be upon us, when my languish- ing life, which the Nejumy compared to a flickering lamp-wick, was likely (he said) to fail at Kheybar. Two months already I had endured this black -captivity of Abdullah ; the third moon was now rising in her horns, which I hoped in Heaven would see me finally delivered. The autumn green corn was grown to the yellowing ear ; another score of days — so the Lord delivered them from the locust — and they would gather in their wheat-harvest. I desired to leave them richer in water at Kheybar. Twenty paces wide of the strong Sefsafa spring was a knot of tall rushes ; there I hoped to find a new fountain of water. The next land-holders hearkened gladly to my saw, for water is mother of corn and dates, in the oases ; and the sheykh's brother responded that to-morrow he would bring eyyal, to open the ground. — Under the first spade-stroke we found wet earth, and oozing joints of the basalt rock : then they left their labour, saying we should not speed, because it was begun on a Sunday. They remembered also my words that, in case we found a spring of water, they should give me a milch cow. On the morrow a greater working party assembled. It might be they were in doubt of the cow, and would let the work lie until the Nasrany's departure, for they struck but a stroke or two in my broken ground ; and then went, with crowbars, to try their strength about the old well-head, and see if they might not enlarge it. The iron bit in the flaws of the rock ; and stiffly straining and leaning, many together, upon their crowbars, they sprung and rent up the intractable basalt. Others who looked on, whilst the labourers took breath, would bear a hand in it : among them the Nejumy showed his manly pith and stirred a mighty quarter of basalt. When it came to mid-day they forsook their day's labour. Three forenoons they wrought thus with the zeal of novices : in the second they sacrificed a TIM-: SPRINGS OK KiFi-;vr,.\i: goat, and sprinkled her blood upon the rock. I had not seen Arabs labour thus in fellowship. In the Arabs are indigent corroded minds full of speech- wisdom ; in the negroes' more prosperous bodies are hearts more robust. They also fired the rock, and by the third day the labourers had drawn out many huge stones : now the old well-head was become like a great bath of tepid water, and they began to call it el-hammam. We had struck a side vein, which increased the old current of water by half as much again, — a benefit for ever to the husbandmen of the valley. The tepid springs of Kheybar savour upon the tongue of sulphur, with a milky smoothness, save the Ayn er-Reyili, which is tasteless. Yellow frogs inhabit these springs, besides the little silver-green fishes. Green filmy webs of water- weed are wrapped about the channels of the lukewarm brooks, in which lie little black turreted snails, like those of W. Thirba and el-Ally [and Palmyra]. I took up the straws of caddis- worms and showed them to Amm Mohammed : he considered the building of those shell-pipes made without hands, and said ; " Oh the marvellous works of God ; they are perfect without end ! and well thou sayest, * that the Kheyabara are not housed as these little vermin ! ' 3 I had nearly outworn the spite of fortune at Kheybar ; and might now spend the sunny hours, without fear, sitting by the spring Ayn er-Keyih, a pleasant place, little without the palms ; and where only the eye has any comfort in all the blackness of Kheybar. Oh, what bliss to the thirsty soul is in that sweet light water, welling soft and warm as milk, [86° F.] from the rock ! And I heard the subtle harmony of Nature, which the profane cannot hear, in that happy stillness and solitude. Small bright dragon-flies, azure, dun and ver- milion, sported over the cistern water ruffled by a morning breath from the figgera, aud hemmed in the solemn lava rock. The silver fishes glance beneath, and white shells lie at tho bottom of this water world. I have watched there the young of the thob, shining like scaly glass and speckled : this faireut of saurians lay sunning, at the brink, upon a stone ; and of1.1 times moving upon them and shooting out the tongue in? snatched his prey of flies without ever missing. — Glad were we when Jummar had filled our girby of this sweet water. The irrigation rights of every plot of land are inscribed in the sheykhs' register of the village ; — the week-day and the hours when the owner with foot and spade may dam off and draw to himself the public water. Amongst these rude Arabian villagers are 110 clocks nor watches, — nor anything almost of 56 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA civil artifice in their houses. They take their wit in the day- time, by the shado wing-round of a little wand set upon the channel brink. — This is that dial of which we read in Job : * a servant earnestly desireth the shadow . . . our days on the earth are a shadow.' In the night tbey make account of time more loosely. The village gates are then shut ; but the waterers may pass out to their orchards from some of the next-lying houses. Amm Mohammed tells me that the husbandmen at Medina use a metal cup, pierced with a very fine eye, — so that the cup set floating in a basin may sink justly at the hour's end. * * * * * * One afternoon when I went to present myself to the village tyrant, I saw six carrion beasts, that had been theluls, couched before Abdullah's door! the brutes stretched their long necks faintly upon the ground, and their mangy chines were humpless. Such could be none other than some unpaid soldiers' jades from Medina ; and I withdrew hastily to the Nejumy. — Certain Ageylies had been sent by the Pasha ; and the men had ridden the seventy miles hither in five days ! — Such being the Ageyl, whose forays formerly — some of them have boasted to me — " made the world cold ! " they are now not seldom worsted by the tribesmen of the desert. In a late expedition of theirs from Medina, we heard that ' forty were fallen, their baggage had been taken, and the rest hardly saved themselves.' — I went back to learn their tidings, and meeting with Abdullah in the street, he said, " Good news, Khalil ! thy books are come again, and the Pasha writes, * send him to Ibn Rashid '." On the morrow, Abdullah summoned me; he sat at coffee in our neighbour Hamdan's house. — c This letter is for thee, said he, (giving me a paper) from the Pasha's own hand.' And opening the sheet, which was folded in our manner, I found a letter from the Pasha of Medina ! written [imperfectly], as follows, in the French language ; with the date of the Christian year, and signed in the end with his name, — Stibry. [Ad literam] Le 11 Janvier 1878 [Medine] D'apr6s 1'avertissement de 1'autorite local, nous sommes sache votre arrivee a Khaiber, a cette occasion je suis oblige de faire venir les lettres de recommendation et les autres papiers a votre charge. En etudiant a peine possible les livres de compte, les papiers volants et les cartes, entin parmi ceux qui sont arrivaient-ici, jai disserne que votre idee de voyage, corriger la carte, de savoir les Till-: :• \Y IS SET FRI conditions tlVtat, ot do (ruuvrr !<•.-> monuments antiques <lo 1' Arabia crntralo dans le but cle publier uu immdo je suis liii-ii satist'ai.-ant a votre etude utile pom- I'lmivers dana ce point, et c'est un bon parti pour vous aussi ; mais vous avez connu rortiiinoment jusqu' aujourd'liui j>armi aux alantours des populations que vous trouve, il y a tant des Bedouins temeraire, tant que vous avez le recommendion de quelque person nages, je ne regarde que ce votre voyage est dangereux parmi les Bedouins sus-indicjue ; c'est pour cela je m'oblige de vous inform^ a votre retour a un moment plutot possible auprcs de Chelh d'lbni-Rechite a 1'abri de toute danger, et vous trouvrez ci-join tous vos les lettres qu'il etait chez-nous, et la recommendation au dite Chelh de ma part, et de la prenez le chemin dans ces jours a votre destination. SABRI " And now, I said to Abdullah, where is that money which pertains to me, — six lira ! " The black village governor startled, changed his Turkish countenance, and looking felly, he said " We will see to it." The six Ageylies had ridden from Medina, by the Pasha's order, only to bring up my books, and they treated me with regard. They brought word, that the Pasha would send other twenty -five Ageylies to Hayil for this cause. The chief of the six, a Wahaby of East Nejd, was a travelled man, without fanaticism ; he offered himself to accompany me whithersoever I would, and he knew, he said, all the ways, in those parts and far southward in Arabia. The day after when nothing had been restored to me, I found Abdullah drinking coffee in sheykh Salih's house. "Why, I said, hast thou not restored my things ? " — " I will restore them at thy departure." — " Have you any right to detain them ? " " Say no more (exclaimed the villain, who had spent my money) — aNasrany to speak to me thus! — or I will give thee a buffet." — " If thou strike me, it will be at thy peril. My hosts, how may this lieutenant of a dozen soldiery rule a village, who cannot rule himself ? one who neither regards the word of the Pasha of Medina, nor fears the Sultan, nor dreads Ullah himself. Salih, sheykh of Kheybar, hear how this coward threatens to strike a guest in thy house ; and will ye suffer it my hosts ? " — Abdullah rose and struck me brutally in the face. — " Salih, I said to them, and you that sit here, are you free men ? I am one man, infirm and a stranger, who have suffered so long, and unjustly, — you all have seen it ! at this slave's hands, that it might have whitened my beard : if I should hereafter remember to complain of him, it is likely he will lose his office." Auwad, the kady who was a friend, and sat by me, began some conciliating 58 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA speech. * Abdullah, he said, was to blame : Khalil was also to blame. There is danger in such differences ; let there be no more said betwixt you both.' Abdullah: "Now, shall I send thee to prison ? " — " I tell thee, that I am not under thy jurisdiction ; " and I rose to leave them. " Sit down, he cries, and brutally snatched my cloak, and this askar — he looked through the case- ment and called up one of his men that passed by — shall lead thee to prison." I went down with him, and, passing Amm Mohammed's entry, I went in there, and the fellow left me. The door was locked, but the Beduin housewife, hearing my voice, ran down to open : when I had spoken of the matter, she left me sitting in the house, and, taking the key with her, the good woman ran to call her husband who was in the palms. Mohammed returned presently, and we went out to the plantations together : but finding the chief of the riders from Medina, in the street, I told him, ' since I. could not be safe here that I would ride with them to the gate of the city. It were no new thing that an Englishman should come thither ; was there not a cistern, without the northern gate, named Birket el-Engleysy ? ' Mohammed asked ' What had the Pasha written ? he would hear me read his letter in the Nasrany language ' : and he stood to listen with great admiration. ' Pitta-pitta-pitta ! is such their speech ? ' laughed he ; and this was his new mirth in the next coffee meetings. But I found the good man weak as water in the end of these evils : he had I know not what secret under- standing now with the enemy Abdullah ; and, contrary to his former words, he was unwilling that I should receive my things until my departure ! The Ageylies stayed other days, and Abdullah was weary of entertaining them. I gave the Wahaby a letter to the Pasha ; which, as soon as they came again to town, he delivered. Kheybar, in the gibing humour of these black villagers, is jezirat, ' an island ' : it is hard to come hither, it is not easy to depart. Until the spring season there are no Aarab upon the vast enclosing Harra : Kheybar lies upon no common way, and only in the date-harvest is there any resort of Beduins to their wadian and villages. In all the vulcanic country about, there were now no more than a few booths of Heteym, and the nearest were a journey distant. — But none of those timid and oppressed nomads durst for any silver convey the Nasrany again to Hayil ; so aghast are they all of the displeasure of Ibn Rashid. I thought now to go to the (Harra) village el-Hayat, which lies in the way of them that pass between Ibn Rashid's country and Medina : and I might there find carriage to the Jebel. THE ENGLKVs (I GOD RULE I Tho Nrjuniy blamed my plain speaking : I liad no wit, he I to be a traveller ! " If thou say among the Moslemin, that thou art a Moslem, will your people kill thee, when you return home ? — art thou afraid of this, Khalil?" So at the next coffee meetings he said, " I have found a man that will not befriend himself ! I can in no wise persuade sheykh Khalii : but if all the Moslemin were like faithful in the religion, I say, the world would not be able to resist us." * * ' * * * The Nejiimy family regarded me with affection: my medicines helped (and they believed had saved) their infant daughter; I was now like a son in the house, wullali in-ak •in ithil I'-cli'dini )/d Khfilil, said they both. Mohammed exhorted me, to dwell with him at Kheybar, 'where first after long travels, I had found good friends. I should be no more molested among them for my religion ; in the summer market I might be his salesman, to sit at a stall of mantles and kerchiefs and measure out cubits of calico, for the silver of the poor Beduw. He would buy me then a great-eyed Galla maiden to wife.' — There are none more comely women in the Arabs' peninsula ; they are gracious in the simplest garments, and commonly of a well tempered nature; and, notwithstanding that which is told of the hither Habash countries, there is a becoming modesty in their heathen blood. — This was the good Nejumy, a man most worthy to have been born in a happier country! * * * * * * Mohammed asked, " What were the Engleys good for ? " I answered, " They are good rulers." — " Ha ! and what rule they? since they be not rebels (but friends) to the Sooltan ? " — " In these parts of the world they rule India ; an empire greater than all the Sultan's Dowlat, and the principal beled of the Moslemin." — " Eigh ! I remember I once heard an Hindy say, in the Haj, ' God continue the liakumat (government of) el-Engleys ; for a man may walk in what part he will of el- Hind, with a bundle of silver ; but here in these holy countries even the pilgrims are in clanger of robbers ! ' " — Amm Mohammed contemned the Hindies, " They have no heart, he said, and I make no account of the Eugleys, for ruling over never so many of them : I myself have put to flight a score of Hintid" — and he told me the tale. " It was in my ignorant youth : one morning in the Haj season, going out under the walls (of Medina), to my father's orchard, I saw a company of Hinud sitting before me upon a hillock, — sixteen persons : there sat a young maiden in the midst of them — very richly attired ! for 60 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA they were some principal persons. Then I shouted, and lifting my lance, began to leap and run, against them ; the Hindies cried out, and all rising together they fled to save their lives ! — leaving the maiden alone; and the last to forsake her was a young man — he perchance that was betrothed to be her liusband." — The gentle damsel held forth her delicate hands, beseeching him by signs to take only her ornaments : she drew off her rings, and gave them to the (Beduin-like) robber ; — Mohammed had already plucked off her rich bracelets ! But the young prodigal, looking upon her girlish beauty and her distress, felt a gentleness rising in his heart and he left her [unstained]. — For such godless work the Arabs have little or no contrition ; this worthy man, whom God had established, even now in his religious years, felt none. — It may seem to them that all world's good is khcyr Ullali, howbeit diversely holden, in several men's hands ; and that the same (whether by sub- tilty, or warlike endeavour) might well enough be assumed by another. * * * * * * Twelve days after I had written to the Pasha, came his rescript to Abdullah, with a returning hubt; bidding him 'beware how he behaved himself towards the Engleysy, and to send me without delay to Ibn Rashid; and if no Beduins could be found to accompany me, to send with me some of the Ageyl : he was to restore my property immediately, and if anything were missing he must write word again.' The black village governor was now in dread for himself; he went about the village to raise that which he had spent of my robbed liras : and I heard with pain, that (for this) he had sold the orphan's cow. He summoned me at night to deliver me mine own. The packet of books and papers, received a fortnight before from Medina, was sealed with the Pasha's signet : when opened a koran was missing and an Arabic psalter ! I had promised them to Arum Mohammed ; and where was the camel bag ? Abdullah murmured in his black throat * Whose could be this infamous theft ? ' and sent one for Dakhil the post. — Dakhil told us that * Come to Medina he went, with the things on his back, to the government palace ; but meeting with a principal officer — one whom they all knew — that personage led him away to drink coffee in his house. "Now let me see, quoth the officer, what hast thou brought ? and, if that Nasrany's head should be cut off, some thing may as well remain with me, before all goes up to the Pasha." — The great man compelled me, said Dakhil, so I let him have the books ; and when he saw the Persian camel- ESCAl'K I'KuM A HARP, MKN/IL 61 bag, "Tin's too, h.« said, may remain with me."1 — " Ullah r the father of him!'' exclaimed Abdullah: and, many of the askars' voices answered about him, " Ullah curse him ! " I asked, " Is it a poor man, who has done this?" Abtfn.f/»/i : " Poor! he is rich, the Lord curse him ! It is our colonel, Khalil, at Medina; where he lives in a great house, and receives a great rnment salary, besides all the [dishonest] private gains of his office." — "The Lord curse him!" exclaimed the Nejumy. " The Lord curse him ! answered Aman (the most gentle minded of them all), he has broken the namtts of the Dowla ! " Abdullah : " Ah ! Khalil, he is one of the great ones at Medina, and gomdny ! (a very adversary). Now what can we do, shall we send again to Medina ? " A villager lately arrived from thence said, "The colonel is not now in Medina, we heard a little before our corning away, that he had set out for Mecca." — So must other days be consumed at Kheybar for this Turkish villain's wrong ! in the meanwhile Sa"bry Pasha might be recalled from Medina ! I sat by the Nejumy 's evening fire, and boiled tea, which he and his nomad jara had learned to drink with me, when we heard one call below stairs ; the joyous housewife ran down in haste, and brought up her brother, who had been long out cattle lifting, with another gatuny. The wretch came in jaded, and grinning the teeth : and when he had eaten a morsel, he began to tell us his adventure ; — ' That come in the Jeheyna dira, they found a troop of camels, and only a child to keep them. They drove off the cattle; and drove them forth, all that day, at a run, and the night after ; until a little before dawn, when, having yet a day and a half to Kheybar, they fell at unawares among tents ! — it was a menzil of Harb. The hounds barked furiously, at the rushing by of camels, the Aarab ran from their beyts, with their arms. He and his rafik alighting hastily, forsook the robbed cattle, and saving no more than their matchlocks, they betook themselves to the side of a mountain. From thence they shot down against their pursuers, and those shot up at them. The Harb bye and bye went home to kahwa ; and the geyatin escaped to Kheybar on foot with their weary lives ! ' The next day Amm Mohammed called his robber brother- in-law to supper. The jaded wretch soon rose from the dish to kindle his pipe, and immediately went home to sleep. — Mohammed's wife returned later from milking their few goats ; and as she came lighting herself upon the stairs, with a flaming palm-branch, his keen eye discerned a trouble in her looks. — 62 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA " Eigh ! woman, he asked, what tidings ? " She answered with a sorrowful alacrity, in the Semitic wise, " Well ! [a first word of good augury], it may please Ullah : my brother is very sick, and has a flux of the bowels, and is lying in great pain, as if he were to die, and we cannot tell what to do for him : — it is [the poor woman cast down her eyes] as if my brother had been poisoned ; when he rose from eating he left us, and before he was come home the pains took him ! " — Mohammed responded with good humour, " This is a folly, woman, who has poisoned the melaun ? I am well, and sheykh Khalil is well ; and Haseyn and thou have eaten after us of the same mess, — but thy brother is sick of his cattle stealing ! Light us forth, and if he be ailing we will bring him hither, and sheykh Khalil shall cure him with some medicine." We found him easier ; and led him back with us. I gave him grains of laudanum powder, which he swallowed without any mistrusting. — I saw then a remedy of theirs, for the colic pain, which might sometime save life after drugs have failed. The patient lay groaning on his back, and his sister kneaded the belly smoothly with her housemother's hands [they may be as well anointed with warm oil] ; she gave him also a broth to drink, of sour milk with a head of (thum) garlic beaten in it. At midnight we sent him away well again : then I said to Amm Mohammed, "It were easier to die once, than to suffer heart- ache continually." — " The melaun has been twinged thus often- times ; and who is there afraid of sheykh Khalil ; if thou bid me, little father Khalil, I would drink poison." — The restless Beduwy was gone, the third morrow, on foot o.ver the Harra, to seek hospitality (and eat flesh-meat) at el-Hayat, — forty miles distant. The Siruan asked a medicine for a chill ; and I brought him camphor. " Eigh ! said Abdullah, is not this kafur of the dead, wherewith they sprinkle the shrouds as they are borne to the burial? — five drops of this tincture will cut off a man's off- spring. What hast thou done to drink of it, Amm Moham- med ! " The good man answered, " Have I not Haseyn, and the little bint ? Wellah if sheykh Khalil have made me from this time childless, I am content, because Khalil has done it." The black audience were aghast; " Keach me, I said to them, that bottle and I will drink twice five drops." But they murmured, " Akhs ! and was this one of the medicines of Khalil ? " * * * * # * The day was at hand, which should deliver me from UNCLE KHALI I, K hoy bar. Dukhil the post was willing to convey me to Hayil, for two of my gold pieces : but that would leave me with less th.-iu eighty shillings — too little to bring me to some friendly soil, out of the midst of Arabia. Eyad, a Bishr Ageyly, prof- fered to carry me on his sick theliil for five reals to ilayil. I thought to go first (from this famine at K hey bar) to buy victual at el-llayat; their oasis had not been wasted by locusts. Those negro Nejd villagers are hospitable, and that which the Arabians think is more than all to the welfare of their tribes and towns, the sheykh was a just and honourable person. — The Nejumy's wife's brother had returned from thence after the three days' hospitality : and being there, with two or three more loitering Beduwies like himself, he told us that each day a householder had called them ; and " every host killed a bull to their supper ! " " It is true, said the Nejumy ; a bull there is not worth many reals." — "The villagers of Hayat are be- come a whiter people of late years ! quoth the Beduwy ; this is through their often marriages with poor women of Heteym and Jeheyna." — Eyad, a Beduwy, and by military adoption a townsman of Medina, was one who had drunk very nigh the dregs, of the mischiefs and vility of one and the other life. A Beduwy (mild by nature to the guest), he had not given his voice for my cap- tivity ; but in the rest he was a lukewarm adulator of Abdullah. — All my papers were come again, save only the safe-conduct of Ibn Hash-id, which they had detained ! The slave-hearted Abdullah began now to call me ' Uncle Khalil ' ; for he thought, 'What, if the Nasrany afterward remembered his wrongs, and he had this power with the Dowla — ' ? How pitiful a behaviour might I have seen from him if our lots had been reversed at Kheybar ! He promised nie provision for the way, and half the Ageyly's wages to Hayil ; but I rejected them both. Amm Mohammed was displeased because I would not receive from him more than two handfuls of dates : — he was low him- self till the harvest, and there remained not a strike of corn in the village. I divided my medicines with the good man, and bought him a tunic and a new gun-stock : these with other reals of mine (which, since they were loose in my pockets, Abdullah had not taken from me), already spent for corn and samn in his house, might suffice that Amm Mohammed should not be barer at my departure, for all the great-hearted goodness which he had shown me in my long tribulation at Kheybar. He said, ' Nay, Khalil, but leave me happy with the remembrance, and take it not away from me by requiting me ! only this 64 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA I desire of thee that thou sometimes say, ' The Lord remember him for good.' Am I not thy abu, art not thou my son, be we not brethren ? and thou art poor in the midst of a land which thou hast seen to be all hostile to thee. Also Ahmed would not suffer it ; what will my brother say ? and there would be talk amongst the Kheyabara." I answered, "I shall say nothing : " then he consented. So I ever used the Arabian hospitality to my possibility : yet now I sinned in so doing, against that charitable integrity, the human affection, which was in Amm Mohammed ; and which, like the waxen powder upon summer fruits, is deflowered under any rude handling. When he received my gift, it seemed to him that I had taken away his good works ! * * * * * * Abdullah had purchased other camel-bags for me, from a salesman who arrived from Medina. I agreed with Eyad ; and on the morrow we should depart from Kheybar. — When that blissful day dawned, my rafik found it was the 21st of the moon Sdfr, and not lucky to begin our journey ; we might set out, he said, the next morning. I saw then two men brought before Abdullah from Umm Kida, for resisting the forced cleansing and sweeping in their suk. Abdullah made them lie upon their breasts, in a public alley, and then, before weeping women, and the village neigh- bours,— and though the sheykhs entreated for them, he beat them, with green palm rods ; and they cried out mainly, till their negro blood was sprinkled on the ground. Amm Mohammed went by driving his kine to the common gathering-place of their cattle without the gates : his half-Beduin (gentle) heart swelled to see this bestial (and in his eyes inhuman) spectacle ! And with loud seditious voice as he returned, he named Abu Aly " very ass, and Yahudy " ! to all whom he found in the village street. The new sun rising, this was the hour of my deliverance from the long deyik es-sudr, the straitness of the breast in affliction, at Kheybar. Eyad said that all his hire must be paid him, ere the setting out ; because he would leave it with his wife. In a menzil of the Aarab, I had not doubted, a Beduwy is commonly a trusty rafik ; but Eyad was a rotten one, and therefore I had covenanted to pay him a third in departing, a third at el-Hayat, and a third at our arriving in Hayil. Abdullah sought to persuade me with deceitful reasons ; but now I refused Eyad, who I foresaw from this beginning would be a dangerous companion. Abdullah : " Let us not strive, we may find some other, and in all things, I would fain content TIIK .IK \V-UKE ANNEZY 65 Khalil." Afterwards h<> said, " I voucli for Kyj'id, and if he fail in an\ tiling, the fault, b«« upon my ln-ad ! an askar of mine, Hi' Uowla JWu " /"/>// "/•//', and for any misdeed I might cut oil' his head. Ky.-id's am-ars of pay are now live or six hundred reals, and he durst not disobey the Dowla. Say which way you would take to llayil, and to that I will bind him. You may rest here a day and there a day, at your own liking, and drink whey, where you find Beduins ; and to this Eyad ia willing because his thelul is feeble. Wouldst thou as much as fifteen days for the journey ? — I will give him twenty-six to go and come." The Nejiimy, who stood as a looker-on to-day among us, was loud and raw in his words ; and gave his counsel so fondly before them all, and manifestly to my hurt ! that I turned from him with a heartache. The traveller should sail with every fair wind in these fanatical countries, and pass forth before good- will grow cold : I made Eyad swear before them all to be faithful to me, and counted the five reals in his hand. Abdullah had now a request, that an Ageyly Bishr lad, Merjaii, should go in our company. I knew him to be of a shallow humour, a sower of trouble, and likely by recounting my vicissitudes at Kheybar to the Aarab in the way, to hinder my passage. Abdullah : ' He asks it of your kindness, that he might visit an only sister and his little brother at Hayil ; whom he has not seen these many years.' I granted, and had ever afterward to repent : — there is an impolitic humanity, which is visited upon us. The Jew-like Southern Annezy are the worst natured (saving only the Kahtan) of all the tribes. I marked with discomfort of heart the craven adulation of Eyad, in his leavetaking of these wretches. Although I had suffered wrongs, I said to them (to the manifest joy of the guilty Abdullah,) the last word of Peace. — My comrade Aman came along with me. The Nejumy was gone before to find his mare ; he would meet us by the way and ride on a mile with me. We went by a great stone and there I mounted : Aman took my hand feebly in his dying hand, and prayed aloud that the Lord would bring me safely to my journey's end. The poor Galla earnestly charged Eyad, to have a care of me, and we set forward. * * * 1 * At little distance the Nejumy met us, — he was on foot. He said, his mare had strayed in the palms ; and if he might find her, he would ride down to the Tubj, to cut male palm blossoms of the half-wild stems there, to marry them with his female VOL. ii. E 66 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA trees at home. One husband stem (to be known by the doubly robust growth) may suffice among ten female palms. — " Now God be with thee, my father Mohammed, and requite thee." — " God speed thee Khalil," and he took my hand. Amm Mohammed went back to his own, we passed further ; and the world, and death, and the inhumanity of religions parted us for ever ! We beat the pad-footed thelul over the fenny ground, and the last brooks and plashes. And then I came up from the pestilent Kheybar wadian, and the intolerable captivity of the Dowla, to a blissful free air on the brow of the Harra ! In the next hour we went by many of the vaults, of wild basalt stones, which I have supposed to be barrows. After ten miles' march we saw a nomad woman standing far off upon a lava rock, and two booths of Heteym. My Beduin rafiks showed me the heads of a mountain southward, el-Baitha, that they said stands a little short of Medina. It was afternoon, we halted and loosed out the thelul to pasture, and sat down till it should be evening. When the sun was setting we walked towards the tents: but the broken- headed Eyad left me with Harned and his loaded thelul, and went with Merjan to guest it at the other beyt. The house- holder of the booth where I was, came home with the flocks and camels ; he was a beardless young man. They brought us buttermilk, and we heard the voice of a negress calling in the woman's apartment, Hamed ! yd Hamo ! She was from the village, and was staying with ,these nomad friends in the desert, to refresh herself with leban. It was presently dark, but the young man went abroad again with the ass to bring in water. He returned after two hours and, without my know- ledge, they sacrificed a goat : it was for this he had fetched water. The young Heteyiny called me — the adulation of an abject race — Towil el-amr. After the hospitality Eyad entered, "Khalil, he said, hast thou reserved no morsels for me, that am thy rafik ? " — " Would a rafik have forsaken me ? " He now counselled to hold a more westerly course, according to the tidings they had heard in the other tent, 'that we might come every day to menzils of the Aarab, and find milk and refreshment ; whereas, if I visited el- Hayat, all the way northward to Hayil from thence was now bare of Beduins.' — I should thus miss el-Hayat, and had no provisions : also I assented to them in evil hour ! it had been better to have yielded nothing to such treacherous rafiks. We departed at sunrise, having upon our right hand, in the ' White Harra ' (el-Abiath) a distant mountain, which they like- WITHOUT SHELTER OR WAT Kit C7 wise iianird < 'r-AW/A>/ [other than that in the M.-j;ix, nigh Medina). In that, jrbel, quoth my rafiks, are the highest shdcbdn (seyl-st rands) of \Y. t>r-Kinnmah ; but all on this side seyls down to the (great I I''.i^) Wady t-l-II ninth. We passed by sharp Classy lavas; k< — /<>///'/' said my companions. A pair of great lapwing-like fowl, Jnttnint, flattered before us; I have seldom seen them in the deserts [and only at this season] : they have whitish and dun-speckled feathers. Their eggs (brown and rose, black speckled) I have found in May, laid two together upon the bare wilderness gravel [near Maan] ; they were great as turkey-e^-ps and well tasting : the birds might be a kind of bustards. "Their flesh is nesh as cotton between the teeth," quoth the Bishr Sybarite Eyad. Merjan and Eyad lured to them, whistling; they drew off their long gun-leathers, and stole under the habaras ; but as Beduins will not cast away lead in the air, they returned bye and bye as they went. I never saw the Arabs' gunning help them to any game : only the Nejumy used to shoot at, (and he could strike down) flying partridges. From hence the vulcanic field about us was a wilderness of sharp lava stones, where few or no cattle paths [Bishr, jadda] appeared; and nomads go on foot among the rocking blocks un- willingly. A heavy toppling stone split the horny thickness of Hamed's great toe. I alighted that he might ride; but the negro borrowed a knife and, with a savage resolution, shred away his flesh, and went on walking. In the evening halt, he seared the bloody wound, and said, it would be well enough, for the next marches. As we journeyed the March wind blustered up against us from the north ; and the dry herbage and scudding stems of sere desert bushes, were driven before the blast. Our way was uncertain, and without shelter or water ; the height of this lava-plain is 3400 feet. Merjan — the lad was tormented with a throbbing ague-cake (tdhal), after the Kheybar fever, shouted in the afternoon that he saw a flock ; and then all beside his patience he shrieked back curses, because we did not follow him : the flock was but a troop of gazelles. " Fen el- Aarab, they said at last, the nomads where? — nejfera ! deceitful words ; but this is the manner of the Heyteyman ! they misled us last night, Ullah send them confusion." The negro had drunk out nearly all in my small waterskin : towards evening he untied the neck and would have made a full end of it himself at a draught ; but I said to him, " Nay, for we have gone and thirsted all the day, and no man shall have more than other." The Beduins cried out upon him, "And thinkest thou that we be yet in the Saheyn ? this is the kh&la and no swaggerino- place of the Kheyabara." Finally, when the sun set, we found 68 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA a hollow ground and sidr trees to bear off the night wind, which blew so fast and pierced our slender clothing : they rent down the sere white arms of a dead acacia, for our evening fire. Then kneading flour of the little water which remained to us, we made hasty bread under the embers. The March night was cold. We departed when the day dawned, and held under the sand- stone mountain GUTS : and oh, joy ! this sun being fairly risen, the abhorred land-marks of Kheybar appeared no more. We passed other vaulted cells and old dry walling upon the waste Harra, and an ancient burying-place. " See, said Eyad, these graves of the auellin, how they lie heaped over with stones ! " We marched in the vulcanic field — * a land whose stones are iron ', and always fasting, till the mid-afternoon, when we found in some black sand-beds footprints of camels. At first my rafiks said the traces were of a rahla five to ten days old ; but taking up the jella, they thought it might be of five days ago. The droppings led us over the Harra north-westward, towards the outlying plutonic coasts of J. Hejjur. — Footprints in the desert are slowly blotted by insensible wind causing the sand corns to slide ; they might otherwise remain perfectly until the next rain. — In a monument lately opened in Egypt, fresh prints of the workmen's soles were found in the fine powder of the floor ; and they were of an hundred men's ages past ! The Beduins went to an hollow ground, to seek a little ponded rain, and there they filled the girby. That water was full of wiggling white vermin ; and we drank — giving God thanks — through a lap of our kerchiefs. [We may see the flaggy hare-lips of the camel fenced with a border of bristles, bent inwardly ; and through this brush the brute strains all that he drinks of the foul desert waters !] The Beduin rafiks climbed upon every high rock to look for the nomads : we went on till the sun set, and then alighted in a low ground with acacia trees and bushes ; there we found a dar of the nomads lately forsaken. We were here nigh the borders of the Harra. As the morrow's sun rose we set forward, and the camel drop- pings led us toward the Thullan Hejjur. We came bye and bye to the Harra side, and the lava-border is here like the ice-brink of a glacier ; where we descended it was twenty feet in height, and a little beside us eight or ten fathoms. Beyond the Harra we passed forth upon barren steeps of plutonic gravel, furrowed by the secular rains and ascending toward the horrid wilderness of mountains, Jebal Hejjur. A napping gazelle-buck, started from a bush before us ; and standing an instant at gaze, he had fallen then to the shot of an European, — but the Beduins are always unready. As we journeyed I saw an hole, a yard deep, THE SANDSTONE PLATFORM MOUNTAIN digged in the desert eartli ; tin- rafi -red me, * It was for a mrjtli'ii' (,ni>- x/r/- of fhr .•;///"//-/";./•;.'— --They kindle a fire in it, and after raking out the embers the sick is seated in the hot sand: such may be a salutary sweating-bath. The Ara- bians dread extremely the homicide disease ; and the calamity of a great sheykh of the Annezy in Kasim was yet fresh in men's memories. — His tribesfolk removed from him in haste; and his own kindred and even his household forsook him ! Leaving the sandstone platform mountain el-KKtdm upon the right hand, we came to the desolate mountains, whose knees and lower crags about us were traps, brown, yellow, grey, slate- colour, red and purple. Small black eagles, el-agab, lay upon the wing above us, gliding like the shadows, which their out- stretched wings cast upon the rocky coasts. Crows and ra"khams hovered in the lower air, over a forsaken dar of the nomads : their embers were yet warm, they had removed this morning. The Beduin companions crept out with their long matchlocks, hoping to shoot a crow, and have a pair of shank-bones for pipe- stems. I asked them if there had fallen a hair or feather to their shot in the time of their lives ? They protested, " Ay wellah, Khalil ; and the gatta many times." Not long after we espied the Aarab and the camels. We came up with them a little after noon, when they first halted to encamp. The sheykh, see- ing strangers approach, had remained a little in the hindward ; and he was known to my companions. These nomads were Ferd- dessa, Ibn Sim-ry, Heteym. We sat down together, and a weled milked two of the sheykh's nagas, for us strangers. This sheykh, when he knew me to be the Nasrany, began to bluster, although I was a guest at his milk-bowl. " What ! heathen man, he cries ; what ! Nasrany, wherefore comest thou hither ? Dost thou not fear the Aarab's knife ? Or thinkest thou, 0 Jew-man, that it cannot carve thy throat ? — which will be seen one day. 0 ye his rafiks, will they not cut the wezand of him ? Where go ye now — to Hayil ? but Ibn Bashid will kill him if this (man) come thither again." — The Heteym are not so civil-minded as the right Beduw; they are often rough towards their guests, where the Beduw are gentle-natured. When I saw the man was a good blunt spirit, I derided his ignorance till he was ashamed ; and in this sort you may easily defeat the malicious simplicity of the Arabs. We drove on our beast to their camp, and sat down before a beyt. The householder bye and bye brought us forth a bowl of leban and another of mereesy ; we loosed out the thelul to pas- ture, and sat by our baggage in the wind and beating sun till evening ; when the host bade us enter, and we found a supper 70 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA set ready for us, of boiled rice. He had been one in the Heteymy hubt which was lately taken by a foray of Jeheyna near the walls of Medina. Upon the morrow this host removed with his kindred, and we became guests of another beyt ; for we would repose this day over in their menzil, where I counted thirty tents. When I gave a sick person rhubarb, his friends were much pleased for " by the smack, said they, it should be a good medicine indeed." A few persons came to us to enquire the news : but not many men were at home by day in the Heteymy menzil : for these nomads are diligent cattle-keepers, more than the Beduw. * * * * * * They questioned roughly in the booth, " What are the Nasara, what is their religion ? " One among them said : " I will tell you the sooth in this as I heard it [in Medina, or in the civil north countries] : The Nasara inhabit a city closed with iron and encompassed by the sea ! " Eydd : " Talk not so bois- terously, lest ye offend Khalil ; and he is one that with a word might make this tent to fall about our ears." " Eigh ! they an- swered, could he so indeed ? " I found in their menzil two lives blighted by the morbus gallicus. I enquired from whence had they that malady ? They answered, " From el-Medina." At daybreak the nomad people removed. We followed with them westward, in these mountains ; and ascended through a cragged passage, where there seemed to be no footing for camels. Hamed, who had left us, came limping by with one whom he had found to guide him: "Farewell, I said, akliu Hamda" The Kheybar villain looked up pleased and confused, because I had named him (as one of the valiant) by his sister, and he wished me God speed. We were stayed in the midst by some friends, that would milk for us ere we departed from among them. Infinite seemed to me the horrid maze of these desolate and thirsty mountains ! Their name Jebal Hejjur may be interpreted the stony mountains : — they are of the Welad Aly and Bishr, — and by their allowance of these Heteym. In the valley deeps they find, most years, the rabia and good pasture bushes. These coasts seyl by W. Hejjur to the W. el-Humth. We were now much westward of our way. The nomads removed southward ; and leaving them we descended, in an hour, to a wady bottom of sand, where we found another Heteym menzil, thirty booths, of Si^yder, Ibn Simry. The district (of a kind of middle traps), they name Yeteroha : Eyad's Aarab seldom visited this part of their dira ; and he had been here but once before. These mountains seyl, they say, by W. Khafutha, one of the Kheybar valleys. KV.urs TRI:A< EEROU8 THOUGHTS 71 Merjfin found here some of his own kindred, a household or two of his lUshr clan /A/"/'/"- or /A;/V' /<///.— There are many poor families of Bedtiin tribesmen living (for their more welfare) in the peaceable society of the Ileteym. A man, ihnf wa cousin, laid hands on the thelul, and drew her towards his hospitable beyt. — Our hosts of yesterday sent word of my being in the dira to a sick sheykh of theirs, lln H<\i/:.<'tii, who had been hurt by a spear-thrust in a ghrazzu. Amm Mohammed lately sold some ointment of mine to the sick man's friends in K hoy bar, which had been found excellent ; and his acquaintance desired that I should ride to see him. I consented to wait here one day, until the return of their messenger. When I took out my medicine book and long brass Arabic inkhorn, men and women gathered about me ; it was marvels to them to see me write and read. They whispered, " He sees the invisible ; — at least thou seest more than we poor folk ! — it is written there ! " The host had two comely daughters ; they won- dered to look upon the stranger's white skin. The young women's demeanour was easy, with a maidenly modesty ; but their eye- glances melted the heart of the beardless lad Merjan, their cousin, who had already a girl- wife at Kheybar. These nomad-hareem in Nejd were veiled with the face-clout, but only from the mouth downward ; they wore a silver ring in the right nostril, and a braided forelock hanging upon the temples. The goodman went abroad with his hatchet, and we saw them no more till sunset, when he and his wife came dragging-in great lopped boughs of tolh trees : — where we see the trail of boughs in the khala, it is a sign of the nomad menzils. Of these they made a sheep-pen before the beyt ; and the small cattle were driven in and folded for the night. They call it hatliira; " Shammar, they said, have another name," [serifat]. The host now set before us a great dish of rice. Eyad was treacherous, and always imagining, since he had his wages, how he might forsake me : the fellow would not willingly go to Hayil. " Khalil, shall I leave thee here ? wellah the thelul is not in plight for a long journey." — " Restore then three reals and I will let thee go."— " Ah ! how may I, Khalil ? you saw that I left the money at home." — "Then borrow it here." — " Bless me ! which of these Aarab has any money, or would lend me one real ? " — " All this I said at Kheybar, that thou wouldst betray me ; Eydd, thou shalt carry me to Hayil, as thou art bounden." — " But here lies no way to Hayil, we are come out of the path; these Aarab have their faces towards the Auajy, let us go on with them, it is but two marches, and I will leave thee there." — The ill-faith of the Arabs is a gulf, 72 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA in the path of the unwary! there is nothing to hope for in man, amongst them ; and their heaven is too far off, or without sense of human miseries. Now I heard from this wretch's mouth my own arguments, which he had bravely con- tradicted at Kheybar! On the morrow Eyad would set out with the rising sun : I said, we will remain here to-day, as thou didst desire yesternight and obtain of me. But he loaded ! and then the villanous rafik came with his stick, and — it was that he had learned in the Turkish service — threatened to beat me, if I did not remove : but he yielded immediately. In this menzil I found a Solubby household from W. es- Suffera, which is spoken of for its excessive heat, in the Hejaz, not much north of Mecca. They were here above three hundred miles from home ; but that seems no great distance to the land-wandering Solubba. The man told me that when summer was in, they would go to pitch, alone, at some water in the wilderness : and (having no cattle) they must live then partly of venison. " You have now asked me for an eye- medicine, can you go hunting with blear eyes ? " — " It is the young men (el-eyydl) that hunt; and I remain at home." — I went further by a tent where the Heteymy housewife was boiling down her leban, in a great cauldron, to mereesy. I sat down to see it : her pot sputtered, and she asked me, could I follow the spats with my eyes upward? "For I have heard say, that the Nasara cannot look up to heaven." Harshly she chid ' my unbelief and my enmity to Ullah ' ; and I answered her nothing. Then she took up a ladleful of her mereesy paste, poured samn on it, in a bowl, and bade the stranger eat, saying cheerfully, "Ah! why dost thou continue without the religion ? and have the Lord against thee and the people also ; only pray as we, and all the people will be thy kindred." — Such were the nomads' daily words to me in these deserts. The morning after, when the messenger had not returned, we loaded betimes. The sun was rising as we rode forth ; and at the camp's end another Bishr householder bade us alight, for he had made ready for us — no common morrow's hospitality ; but his dish of rice should have been our supper last evening. Whilst we were eating, a poor woman came crying to me, * to cure her daughter and stay here, — we should be her guests ; and she pretended she would give the hakim a camel when her child was well.' Eyad was now as iniquitously bent that I should remain, as yesterday that I should remove ; but I mounted and rode forth : we began our journey without water. The guest must not stretch the nomad hospitality, we could not ask them to fill our small girby with the common juice of the earth ; yet EYAD'S MATCH LOCK 73 when hosts send to a wcyrid they will send also the guest's water-skin to be filled with their own girbies. \Ve journeyed an hour or two, over the pathless mountains, to a brow from whence we overlooked an empty plain, lying before us to the north. Only Merjun had been here once in his child- hood ; he knew there were waterpits yonder, — and we must find them, since we had nothing to drink. We descended, and saw old footprints of small cattle ; and hoped they might lead to the watering. In that soil of plutonic grit were many glittering morsels of clear crystal. Merjan, looking upon the landmarks, thought bye and bye that we had passed the water ; and my rafiks said they would return upon the theliil to seek it. They bade me sit down here and await them : but I thought the evil in their hearts might persuade them, ere they had ridden a mile, to leave me to perish wretchedly. — Now couching the theliil, they unloaded my bags. " The way is weary, they said, to go back upon our feet, it may be long to find the themeyil ; and a man might see further from the back of the thelul."—"! will look for the water with you."— "Nay, but we will return to thee soon." — "Well go, but leave with me thy matchlock, Eyad ; and else we shall not part so." He laid down his gun unwillingly, and they mounted and rode from me. They were out an hour and a half : then, to my comfort, I saw them returning, and they brought water. — Eyad now complained that I had mistrusted him ! ' And wellah no man before had taken his gun from him ; but this is Khalil ! ' — " Being honest rafiks, you shall find me courteous ; — but tell me, you fired upon your own tribesmen ? " — " Ay, billah ! I an Auajy shot against the Auajy, and if I dealt so with mine own kinsmen, what would I not do unto thee ? " — " How then might I trust thee?" Merjan: "Thou sayest well, Khalil, and this Eyad is a light-headed coxcomb." Among the Aarab, friends will bite at friends thus, betwixt their earnest and game, and it is well taken. Eydd: "Come, let us sit down now and drink tobacco ; for we will not journey all by day, but partly, where more danger is, in the night-time. Go Merjan, gather stalks, and let us bake our bread here against the evening, when it were not well to kindle a fire." The lad rose and went cheer- fully ; for such is the duty of the younger among wayfaring companions in the khala. * * * * An idle hour passed, and we again set forward ; the land was a sandy plain, bordered north- east ward by distant mountains. In the midst, between hills, is a summer watering place of the Auajy, Ycmmcn. There are ancient ten-fathom 74 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA wells, and well steyned, the work, they say, of the Jan. — We have passed again from the plutonic rocks to the (here dark- coloured) red sandstones. A black crater hill appeared now, far in front upon the Harra, J. Ethnan. This sandy wilderness is of the Auajy ; * white ' soil, in which springs the best pasture, and I saw about us almost a thicket of green bushes ! — yet the two-third parts of kinds which are not to the sustenance of any creature : we found there fresh foot-prints of ostriches. " Let us hasten, they said, [over this open country]," and Eyad be- sought me to look in my books, and forecast the peril of our adventure ; ' for welldh yudayyik sudry, his breast was straitened, since I had made him lay down his matchlock by me.' We halted an hour after the stars were shining, in a low place, under a solitary great bush; and couched the thelul before us, to shelter our bodies from the chill night wind, now rising to a hurricane, which pierced through their light Hejaz clothing. The Beduin rafiks, to comfort themselves with fire, forgot their daylight fears : they felt round in the darkness for a few sticks. And digging there with my hands, I found jella in the sand, — it was the old mubrak, or night lair, of a camel ; and doubtless some former passenger had alighted to sleep at our inn of this great desert bush : the beast's dung had been buried by the wind, two or three years. Merjan gathered his mantle full : the precious fuel soon glowed with a red heat in our sandy hearth, and I boiled tea, which they had not tasted till now. The windy cold lasted all night, the blast was outrageous. Hardly at dawn could they, with stiffened fingers, kindle a new fire : the rafiks sat on, — there was not warmth in their half naked bodies to march against this wild wind. — A puff whirling about our bush scattered the dying embers, " Akhs ! cries Eyad, the sot, Ullah yuldan abu ha'l Imibub, condemn the father of this blustering blast ; and he added, Ullah yusidlat aly hcCl liattctb, God punish this firewood." We rose at last ; and the Beduin rafiks bathed their bodies yet a moment in the heat, spreading their loose tunics over the dying embers. The baffling March blast raged in our teeth, carrying the sandy grit into our eyes. The companions staggered forward on foot, — we marched north- eastward : after two hours, they halted to kindle another fire. I saw the sky always overcast with thin clouds. Before noon the storm abated ; and the wind chopping round blew mildly in the afternoon, from the contrary part ! We approached then the black border of the Harra, under the high crater-hill Ethnan. Ethnan stands solitary, in a field of sharp cinder-like and rifted lavas ; the nomads say that this great liilla is inaccessible. THE EIGHTH EVENI 75 Sometimes, after \\int.-r rain, they see a light reeking vapour about the volcano head : and tin- lik" is seen in winter mornings tvrlain deep rifts in the Ilarra, — 'the smell of it is like the breath of warm \\ater.' This was confirmed to me by AniTH Mohammed. In that ]>art there is a (land-mark) valley-ground which lies through the llarra towards el-ilayat, IV. Mukheyat. My small watorskin might hardly satisfy the thirst of three men in one summer's march, and this was the second journey; we drank therefore only a little towards the afternoon, and had nothing to eat. But my mind was full to see so many seamed, guttered and naked cinder-hills of craters in the horrid black lavas before us. The sense of this word hilla, hillaya, is according to Amm Mohammed, ' that which appears evidentl}7,' — and he told me, there is a kind of dates of that name at Medina. Eyad said thus, " Ilalla is the Ilarra-hill of black powder and slaggy matter; Jiclliti/ei/ is a little Harra-hill; hil/t or hdlowat (others say hillidn) are the Harra-hills together." — We marched towards the same hillies which I had passed with Ghroceyb. When the sun. was near setting the rafiks descried, and greeted (devoutly) the new moon. The stars were shining when we halted amidst the hillian the eighth evening of our inarch from Kheybar. They thought it perilous to kindle a fire here, and we had nothing to eat ; — there should be water, they said, not far off". Eyad rose to seek it, but in the night-time he could not find it again. — " I have been absent, he murmured, twelve years ! " He knew his landmarks in the morning ; then he went out, and brought again our girby full of puddle water. The eye of the sun was risen (as they said) ' a spear's length,' on height, when feeling ourselves refreshed with the muddy bever, we set forward in haste. They held a course eastward over the lava country, to Tk&rghrvd : that is a hamlet of one household upon the wells of an antique settlement at the further border of the Harra. Eydd : "It was found in the last generation by one who went up and down, like thyself, yujassas, spying out the country : " and he said I should see Thiirghrud in exchange for el-Hayat. We went on by a long seyl and black sand- bed in the lavas, where was sprung a little rabia : and driving the wretched theliil to these green borders we let her graze forward, or gathering the herbs in our hands as we marched, we thrust them into her jaws. Where there grew an acacia I commonly found a little herbage, springing under the north side of the tree; that is where the lattice of minute leaves 76 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA casts a thin shadowing over the sun-stricken land, and the little autumn moisture is last dried up. I was in advance and saw camels' footprints ! Calling the rafiks I inquired if these were not of yesterday : — they said they were three days old. They could not tell me if the traces were of a ghrazzu, — that is, these Beduin Ageylies did not distinguish whether they were the smaller footprints of theluls, passing lightly with riders, or of grazing camels ! But seeing the footing of camel- calves I could imagine that this was a drove moving between the pastures. It happened as in the former case when we found the traces of Ibn Simry's cattle, that a stranger judged nigher the truth than his Beduin company. The footprints lay always before us, and near mid-day, when they were in some doubt whether we should not turn and avoid them, we saw a camel troop pasturing in a green place, far in front. The herders lay slumbering upon their faces in the green grass, and they were not aware of us, till our voice startled them with the fear of the desert. They rose hastily and with dread, seeing our shining arms ; but hearing the words of peace (salaam aleyk) they took heart. When Eyad afterward related this adventure, " Had they been gom, he said, we should have taken wellah all that sight of cattle ! and left not one of them." So sitting down with them we asked the elder herdsman, ' How he durst lead his camels hither ? ' He answered, " Ullah yetowil timr ha' I weled ! God give that young man [the Emir Ibn Rashid] long life, under whose rule we may herd the cattle without fear. It is not nowadays as it was ten years yore, but I and my little brother may drive the 'bil to pasture all this land over." He sent the child to milk for us ; and way- worn, hungry and thirsting, we swallowed every man three or four pints at a draught : only Merjan, because of his ague cake, could not drink much milk. The lads, that were Heteymies, had been some days out from the menzil, and their camels were jezzin. They carried but their sticks and cloaks, and a bowl between them, and none other provision or arms. When hungry or thirsting they draw a naga's udder, and drink their fill. They showed us where we might seek the nomads in front, and we left them. CHAPTEE V DESERT JOURNEY TO IlAYIL. THE NASRlNY IS DRIVEN FROM THENCE WE came in the afternoon to a sandstone platform standing like an island with cliffs in the basaltic Harra ; the rafiks thought we were at fault, as they looked far over the vulcanic land and could not see the Aarab. From another high ground they thought they saw a camel-herd upon a mountain far off : yet looking with my glass I could not perceive them ! We marched thither, and saw a nomad sitting upon a lava brow, keeping his camels. The man rose and came to meet us ; and 11 \Vhat ho ! he cries, Khalil, comest thou hither again ? " The voice I knew, and now I saw it was Eyada ibn Ajjueyn, the Heteymy sheykh, from whose menzil I had departed with Ghroceyb to cross the Harra, to Kheybar ! Eyada saluted me, but looked askance upon my rafiks, and they were strange with him and silent. This is the custom of the desert, when nomads meeting with nomads are in doubt of each other whether friends or foemen. We all sat down ; and said the robust Heteymy, " Khalil what are these with tuee ? "— " Ask them thyself."—" Well lads, what tribesmen be ye, — that come I suppose from Kheybar ? " They answered, " We are Ageyl and the Bashat el-Medina has sent us to convey Khalil to Ibn Bashid."— " But I see well that ye are Beduw, and I say what Beduw?" — Eyad answered, " Yd Fulan, 0 Someone — for yet I heard not thy name, we said it not hitherto, because there might be some debate betwixt our tribes." — " Oho ! is that your dread ? but fear nothing [at a need he had made light of them both], eigh, Khalil ! what are they ? — Well then, said he, I suppose ye be all thirsty ; I shall milk for thee, Khalil, and then for these, if they would drink ! " When my rafiks had drunk, Eyfid answered, " Now I may tell thee we are of Bishr." — " It is well enough, we are friends ; and Khalil thou art I hear a Nasrany, but how didst thou 78 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA see Kheybar?" — " A cursed place." — " Why wouldst thou go thither, did I not warn thee ? " — " Where is Ghroceyb ? " — " He is not far off, he is well ; and Ghroceyb said thou wast a good rafik, save that thou and he fell out nigh Kheybar, I wot never how, and thou wouldst have taken his thelul." — " This is his wild talk." — " It is likely, for Khalil (he spoke to my rafiks) is an honest man ; the medicines our hareem bought of him, and those of Kasim's Aarab, they say, have been effectual. How found ye him ? is he a good rafik ? " — " Ay, this ought we to say, though the man be a Nasrany ! but billah it is the Moslems many times that should be named Nasara." — " And where will ye lodge to-night ? " — " We were looking for the Aarab, but tell us where should we seek their beyts." — " Yonder (he said, rising up and showing us with his finger), take the low way, on this hand ; and so ye linger not you may be at their menzil about the sunsetting. I may perhaps go thither my- self in the evening, and to-morrow ride with you to Hayil." — We wondered to find this welfaring sheykh keeping his own camels ! We journeyed on by cragged places, near the east border of the Harra; and the sun was going down when we found the nomads' booths pitched in a hollow ground. These also were a ferij (dim. feraij, and pi. ferj&ii), or partition, of Heteym. A ferij is thus a nomad hamlet ; and commonly the households in a ferij -are nigh kindred. The most nomad tribes in Nejd are dispersed thus three parts of the year, till the lowest summer season ; then they come together and pitch a great standing menzil about some principal watering of their dira. Wre dismounted before the sheykh's tent ; and found a gay Turkey carpet within, the uncomely behaviour of Heteym, and a miserable hospitality. They set before us a bowl of milk- shards, that can only be well broken between mill-stones. Yet later, these uncivil hosts, who were fanatical young men, brought us in from the camel-milking nearly two pailfuls of that perfect refreshment in the desert : — Eyada came not. These hosts had heard of the Nasrany, and of my journey with Ghroceyb, and knew their kinsman's tale, ' that (though a good" rafik) Khalil would have taken the thelul, when they were nigh Kheybar.' Another said, ' It was a dangerous pas- sage, and Ghroceyb returning had been in peril of his life ; for as he rode again over the Harra there fell a heavy rain. Then he held westward to go about the worst of the lava country ; and as he was passing by a sandy seyl, a head of water came COLD AND WIND down upon liini : his thelul foundered, and his matchlock fell from him : (Iliroceyb hardly saved himself to land, rind «, out the thelul, and found his gun again.' On the morrow wo rode two hours, and came to another hamlet of Ilcteym. — This day we would give to repose, and vent to alight at a beyt ; and by singular adventure that was Sal ih's ! he who had forsaken me in these parts when I came down (now three months ago) from Huyil. As the man stepped out to meet us, I called him by his name, and he wondered to siv me. He was girded in his gunner's belt, to go on foot with a companion to el-Huyat, two marches distant, to have new stocks put, by a good sany (who they heard was come thither), to their long guns. Sulih and Eyad were tribesmen, of one fendy, and of old acquaintance. The booth beside him was of that elder Heteymy, the third companion in our autumn journey. The man coming in soon after saluted me with a hearty countenance ; and Salih forewent his day's journey to the village for his guests' sake. This part of the vulcanic country is named Hebrdn, of a red sandstone berg standing in the midst of the lavas : northward I saw again the mountains Bushra or Buthra. Having drunk of their leban, we gave the hours to repose. The elder Heteymy's wife asked me for a little meal, and I gave her an handful, which was all I had ; she sprinkled it in her cauldron of boiling samn and invited me to the skimming. The housewife poured off the now clajified samn into her butter-skin ; the sweet lees of flour and butter she served before us. I had returned safe, therefore I said nothing; I could not have greeted Salih with the Scandinavian urbanity, " Thanks for the last time : " but his wife asked me, " Is Salih good, Khalil ? " They had a child of six years old ; the little boy, naked as a worm, lay cowering from the cold in his mother's arms ; — and he had been thus naked all the winter, at an altitude (here) of four thousand feet ! It is a wonder they may outlive such evil days. A man came in who was clothed as I never saw another nomad, for he had upon him a home- spun mantle of tent-cloth ; but the wind blew through his heavy carpet garment. I found a piece of calico for the poor mother, to make her child a little coat. When the evening was come Salih set before us a boiled kid, and we fared well. After supper he asked me were I now appeased ? — mcsguin ! he might be afraid of my evil remem- brance and of my magical books. He agreed with Eyad and Merjan that they, in coming-by again from Hayil, should return to him, and then all go down together to Kheybar ; where he 80 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA would sell his samn for dates, to be received at tlie harvest. Though one of the hostile Bishr, he was by adoption an Heteymy, and with Eyad would be safe at Kheybar. — But how might they find these three booths in the wilderness after many days ? Salih gave them the shdr thus ; " The fourth day we remove (when I come again from el-Hayat), to such a ground : when the cattle have eaten the herb thereabout, we shall remove to such other ; after ten or twelve days seek for us between such and such landmarks, and drinking of such waters." — He spoke to ears which knew the names of all bergs and rocks and seyls and hollow grounds in that vast wilderness : Eyad had wandered there in his youth. * * * * * * When the morning's light wakened us we arose and departed. We passed by the berg Hebran, and came to a vast niggera, or sunken bay in the lavas : Eyad brought me to see the place, which they name Bacdi, as a natural wonder. This is the summer water station of those Sbaa households which wander in the south with Misshel ; when the Auajy pitch at Baitha Nethil. In the basalt floor, littered with the old jella of the nomads' camels, are two ancient well-pits. Wild doves flew up from them, as we came and looked in ; they are the birds of the desert waters, even of such as be bitter and baneful to the Arabs. We sat to rest out a pleasant hour in the cliff's shadow (for we thought the Aarab beyond could not be far off) : and there a plot of nettles seemed to my eyes a garden in the desert ! — those green neighbours and homely inheritors, in every land, of human nature. We rested our fill ; then I remounted, and they walked for- ward. Merjan was weary and angry in the midst of our long journey. I said to him, as we went out, " Step on, lad, or let me pass, you linger under the feet of the thelul." He murmured, and turning, with a malignant look, levelled his matchlock at my breast. So I said, " Eeach me that gun, and I will hang it at the saddle-bow, this will be better for thee : " I spoke to Eyad to take his matchlock from him and hang it at the peak. Eyad promised for the lad, " He should never offend me again : for- give him now, Khalil — because I already alighted — I also must bear with him, and this is ever his nature, full of teen." " Enough and pass over now ; — but if I see the like again, weled, I shall teach thee thy error. Eyad, was there ever Beduwy who threatened death to his rafik ? "— " No, by Ullah." " But this (man), cries the splenetic lad, is a Nasrany, — with a Nasrdny who need keep any law? is not this an enemy of Ullah?" At that word I wrested his gun from him, and gave it to Eyad ; DIFFICULT HAFIKS 81 and laying my driving-si lek upon tin- l;id (since t hisis the only discipline they know at Medina), 1 swinged ln'm soundly a moment, and made all liis l);ick smart, from be! ill my .-inns; and the lad, set free, came and kiek.-d mo in yillanniis manner, and making a weapon of his heavy head-cord, IK> struck at me in tlx- face : then he caught up a huge stone and was coming on to break my head, but in this I loosed myself from Kyad. " \Ye have all done foolishly (exclaimed Kyad),eigh! what will be said when this is told another day ?— here ! take thy . MerjAn, but go out of Khalll's sight ; and Khalil befriends with us, and mount again. Ullah ! we were almost at mischief; and Merjan is the most narrow-souled of all that ever I saw, and ways thus." We moved on in silence ; I said only that at the next menzil we would leave Merjan. He was cause, also, that we suffered thirst in the way ; since we must divide with him a third of my small herdsman's girby. Worse than all was that the peevish lad continually corrupted the little good nature in Eyad, with fanatical whisperings, and drew him from me. I repented of my misplaced humanity towards him, and of my yielding to such rafiks to take another way. Yet it had been as good to wink at the lad's offence, if in so doing I should not have seemed to be afraid of them. The Turkish argument of the rod might bring such spirits to better knowledge ; but it is well to be at peace with the Arabs upon any reasonable conditions, that being of a feminine humour, they are kind friends and implacable enemies. The Harra is here like a rolling tide of basalt : the long bilges often rise about pit-like lava bottoms, or niggeras, which lie full of blown sand. Soon after this we came to the edge of the lava- iield ; where upon our right hand, a path descended to Thurgh- rud, half a journey distant. " Come, I said, we are to go thither." But Eyad answered, '' The way lies now over difficult lavas ! and, Khalil, we ought to have held eastward from the morning: yet I will go thither for thy sake, although we cannot arrive this night, and we have nothing to eat." Merjan cried to Eyad not to yield, that he himself would not go out of the way to Thiirgh- rud. Eydd: " If we go forward, we may be with Aarab to- night : so Salih said truly, they are encamped under yonder ;ntain." This seemed the best rede for weary men : I gave :d the word to lead forward. We descended then from the Harra side into a plain country of granite grit, without blade or bush. ' Yet here in good years, said Eyad, they find pasture ; but now the land is mahal, because no autumn rain had fallen in these parts.'— So we marched some miles, and passed by the (granitic) Thullan Buthra. VOL. II. F 82 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA " — But where are we come ! exclaimed the rafiks, gazing about them : there can be no Aarab in this khala ; could Salih have a mind to deceive us ? " The sun set over our forlorn march ; and we halted in the sandy bed of a seyl to sleep. They hobbled the thelul's forelegs, and loosed her out in the moonlight ; but there was no pasture. We were fasting since yesterday, and had nothing to eat, and no water. They found a great waif root, and therewith we made a good fire ; the deep ground covered us, under mountains which are named Ethmdd (pi. of Thammad). The silent night in the dark khala knit again our human imbecility and misery, at the evening fire, and accorded the day's broken fellowship. Merjan forgot his spite ; but showing me some swelling wheals, "Dealest thou thus, he said, with thy friend, Khalil ? the chill is come, and with it the smart."- " The fault was thine ; and I bid you remember that on the road there is neither Moslem nor Nasrany, but we are rufakd, alchudn, fellows and brethren." — " Well, Khalil, let us speak no more of it." Merjan went out — our last care in the night — to bring in the weary and empty thelul ; he couched her to bear off the night wind, and we closed our eyes. The new day rising, we stood up in our sandy beds and were ready to depart. We marched some hours through that dead plain country ; and came among pale granite hills, where only the silver- voiced siskin, Umm Sdlema, flitted in the rocky solitude before us. We had no water, and Eyad went on climbing amongst the bergs at our right hand. Towards noon he made a sign and shouted, * that Merjan come to him with our girby '. — They brought down the skin full of water, which Eyad had found in the hollow of a rock, overlaid with a flat stone ; the work, they supposed, of some Solubby (hunter).— Rubbing milk-shards in the water, we drank mereesy and refreshed ourselves. The height of the country is 4600 feet. We journeyed all day in this poor plight; the same gritty barrenness of plain-land encumbered with granitic and basalt bergs lay always before us. Once only we found some last year's footprints of a rdhla. They watched the horizon, and went on looking earnestly for the Aarab : at half-afternoon Merjan, who was very clear sighted, cried out " I see zdl! " — zol (pi. azzudl), is the looming in the eye of aught which may not be plainly distinguished; so a blind patient has said to me, "I see the zol of the sun." Eyad gazed earnestly and answered, ' He thought billah he did see somewhat.' — Azzual in the desert are discerned moving in the farthest offing, but whether wild creatures or cattle, or nu;n IIKI 83 •il>, it cannot. U> fold. \\h--ii Ky;id and .\b-rj.:m had watehrd awl;; said, "We see two men riding on one thelul ! " Then they pulled of)' h.-istily their gun-leat (ire, and blew the matches and put powder to the touch-holes of their lonir pieces I saw in Kv;id a soil of liastn and trouble! "Why thus?" I ,-isUed. " Hut they have seen us, and now they < hither!"-- My two raftkfl \v«-nt. out, singing and leaping to the muter, -n-d !<''> me \\-iih the thelul ; my secret arms put rne out <>f all d«-:.il.t. I've and bye tliey returned s:iyinLr, that when those rid the glance of their irnns they held off. — " Hut, l.-t us not linger (they cried; in this neighbourhood : " t.hey iu<. tinted the thelui together and rode from me. I folio \\e;ikly on foot, and it came into my mind, that they would :ke me. The day's light faded, the sun at length kissed the horizon, and our hope went down with the sun : we must lodge a. out food or human comfort in the khdla. The Beduin ics climbed upon all rocks to look far out over the desert, and I rode in the plain between them. The thelul went fasting in the mah&l this second day ; but now the wilderness began to amend. The sun was sinking when Merjan shouted, ' He had seen a flock J. Then Eyad mounted with rne, and urging his thelul we made haste to arrive in the short twilight ere it ,ld be dark night : we trotted a mile, and Merjan ran beside us. We soon saw a great flock trooping down in a rocky bay of the mountain m front. A maiden and a lad were herding them ; and unlike all that 1 had seen till now, there were no s in that nomad flock. The brethren may havo heard the flatter of our riding in the loose stones, or caught a sight of three men coming, for they had turned their backs! Such meetings are never without dread in the khala : if we had been land-lopers they were taken tardy ; we had bound them, and driven off the slow-footed flock all that night. Perchance such thoughts were in Eyad, for he had not yet saluted them ; and I tirst hail 3d the lad, — * Salaam aleyk ! ' He hearing it was peace, turned friendly ; and Eyad asked him " Fen cl-madziba, \\here is the place of entertainment?" — we had not seen the 'us The young Beduwy answered us, with a cheerful alacrity, " It is not far off." We knew not what tribesmen they were. The young man left his si*t^r with the flock, and led on before us. It was past prayer time, and none had said his devotion : — they kneeled down now on the sand in the glooming, but (as strangers) not together, and I rode by them ; — a neglect of religion which is not marked in the weary wayfarer, for one must dismount to 84 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA say his formal prayers. It was dusk when we came to their menzil ; and there were but three booths. It had been agreed amongst us that my rafiks should not name me Nasrany. Gently the host received us into his tent and spread down a gay Turkey carpet in the men's sitting place, — it was doubtless his own and his housewife's only bedding. Then he brought a vast bowl, full of leban, and bade us slack our thirst : so he left us awhile (to prepare the guest-meal). When I asked my rafiks, what Anrab were these, Eyad whispered, "By their speech they should be Harb."— "And what Harb?"— "We cannot tell yet." Merjan said in my ear, " Repentest thou now to have brought me with thee, Khalil ? did not my eyes lead tbee to this night's entertainment ? and thou hadst else lodged again in the khala." The host came again, and insisted gently, asking, might he take our water, for they had none. My rafiks forbade him with their desert courtesy, knowing it was therewith that he would boil the guest-meal, for us ; but the goodman prevailed : his sacrifice of hospitality, a yearling lamb, had been slain already. Now upon both parts the Beduins told their tribes : these were Beny Salem, of Harb in Nejd ; but their native dira is upon the sultdny or highway betwixt the Harameyn. It was my first coming to tents of that Beduin nation ; and I had not seen nomad hosts of this noble behaviour. The smiling householder filled again and again his great milk-bowl before us, as he saw it drawn low : — we drank for the thirst of two days, which could not soon be allayed. Seeing me drink deepest of three, the kind host, maazib, exhorted me with iglirtebig ! 'take thy evening drink,' and he piously lifted the bowl to my lips. " Drink ! said he, for here is the good of Ullah, the Lord be praised, and no lack ! and coming from the southward, ye have passed much weary country." JSydd : " Wellah it is all mahal, and last night we were khlua (lone men without human shelter in the khala) ; this is the second day, till this evening we found you." — " El-hamd illah! the Lord be praised therefore," answered the good householder Eyad told them of the ghrazzu. " And Khalil, said our host, what is he ? — a Mesliedy ? (citizen of the town of Aly's violent death or " martyrdom ", Mtshed Aly, before mentioned); methinks his speech, rdtn, and his hue be like theirs." — "Ay, ay. (answered my rafiks), a Meshedy, an hakim, he is now returning to Hayil." — " An uncle's son of his was here very lately, a worthy man ; he came from Hayil, to sell clothing among the Aarab, — and, Khalil, dost thou not know him ? he was as like to thee, billah, as if ye were brethren," A Niclirs HOSPITALITY 85 ^Ye lay down to rest oiirsi-lves. An hour or two later this roiis ma;r/il> and the shepherd, his brother, b'.re in a mighty charger of rice, and th«» straining mutton In-aped upon it,; their hospitality of the deser! \\:is more than one man might carry.— Tlic nomad disli is .-«•! upon tin- carpet, or elfl€ on a ])ieceof tent- clot h, t hat 110 fallen fflOTSels Blight D6 trodden doWB in the earth: — and it' they B66 hut a little milk spilled (in this everlasting dearth and indigence of all things), any horn Arabians will ho out of countenance. I have heard some sentence of their Neby blaming spilt milk. — The kind ma •'/.?!> called upon us, saying, (linn ! lui'ilnm r/ftr/i •!'•<( r/j-AVA//. i-jh'/i ! ' rise, take your meat, and the Lord give you life, and His Prophet.' We answered, kneeling about the dish, l"il»h ////-//,•, 'May the Lord give thee life ' :— the host left us to eat l>ut first Kyad laid aside three of the hest pit ces, "for the man/,ib, and his wives; they have kept bark nothing, he said, for themselves." The nomad house- mothers do always withhold somewhat for themselves and their children, but Kyad, the fine Beduin gentleman, savoured of the town, rather than of the honest simplicity of the desert. " Ah ! nay, what is this ye do? it needetli not, quoth the return- ing host, wellah we have enough; ejlah ! only eat! put your hands to it." "Prithee sit down with us," says Eyad. "Sit down with us. 0 maa/ib, said we all ; without thee we cannot eat" " 7-,V/"''/r/;, nay 1 pray yon, never." — Who among Bed inns is first satisfied lie holds his hand still at the dish; whereas the oa>i^ dweller and the townling, rises and going aside by himself to wash his hands, puts the hungry and slow eaters out of countenance. A P>eduwy at the dish, if he have seen the t« wn, will rend ofT some of the best morsels, and lay them ready to a friend's hand : — E\uxl showed me now this token of a friendly mind. Tiie Beduw are nimble eaters; their fingers are expert to rend the m-.-at, and they swallow their few handfuls of boiled rice or corn with that bird-like celerity which is in all their la In Cupping1 with them, being a weak and slow eater, when I had asked their indulgence, I made no case of this since to enable nature in the worship of the Creator ore than every apefaced devising of human hypocrisy. If any man called me I held that he did it in sincerity; and the Arabs commended that honest plainness in a stranger among them. Tin-re is no second giving of thanks to the heavenly : but rising after meat we bless the man, saying (in this dira) Unaam Ullah alcyk, 'the lord be gracious unto thee/ yd maazib. The dish is borne out, the underset cloth is drawn, ami the bowl is fetched to us: we driiik and return 86 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA to our sitting place at the hearth. Although welfaring and bountiful the goodman had no coffee ; — coffee Arabs are seldom of this hospitality. The guest (we have seen) should depart when the morrow breaks ; and the host sends him away fasting, to journey all that day in the khala. But if they be his friends, and it is the season of milk, a good householder will detain the last night's guests, till his jara have poured them out a draught. Our Beny Salem maazib was of no half -hearted hospitality, and when we rose to depart he gently delayed us. " My wife, he said, is rocking the semila, have patience till the butter come, that she may pour you out a little leban ; you twain are Beduw, but this Meshedy is not, as we, one wont to walk all day 111 the wilderness and taste nothing." — The second spring-time was come about of my sojourning in Arabia ; the desert land flowed again with milk, and I saw with bowings clown of the soul to the divine Nature, this new sweet rabia. " UstibbaJi ! (cries the good man, with the hollow-voiced franchise of the dry desert), take thy morning drink." - 1 speak many times of the Arabian hospitality, since of this I have been often questioned in Europe ; and for a memorial of worthy persons. The hospitality of the worsted booths, — the gentle entertainment of passengers and strangers in a land full of misery and fear, we have seen to be religious. I have heard also this saying in the mouths of town Arabians, — " It is for the report which passing strangers may sow of them in the country : for the hosts beyond will be sure to ask of their guests, 'Where lodged ye the last night; and were ye well entertained ? ' : We journeyed now in a plain desert of gritty sand, which is called Shaaba ; beset with a world of trappy and smooth basalt bergs, so that we could not see far to any part : all this soil seyls down to the W. er-Rummah. We journeyed an hour and came by a wide rautha. Rautha is any bottom, in the desert, which is a sinking place of ponded winter rain : the streaming showers carry down fine sediment from the upper ground, and the soil is a crusted clay and loam. Rautha may signify garden, — and such is their cheerful aspect of green shrubs in the khala: the plural is ridth, [which is also the name of the Wahaby metropolis in East Nejd], I asked Eyad, "Is not this soil as good and large as the Teyma oasis? wherefore then has it not been settled ? " — " I suppose, he answered, that there is no water, or some wells had been found in it, of the auplin." Gd likewise or khtfb'ra is a naked clay bottom in the desert, Till-] 111 ! KITCIIKN" 87 where shallow water is pmuii d after heavy rain. A 7 Khubbera) i- I In- ancient name nf ;i. principal oasis in the N' of K;i~im : I Came there later. 1 with ;i '.illed a hare; and none can better handl-' a Btone than the Aarab: we halted and they made a fin- of sticks. The southern A a rah have seldom a knife, Eyad l'oiTo\\,-d my penknife to cut the throat of his venison; and then he Omat in tli»' ha iv as it was. When their stubble firo was burned out, Kyad tonic up his ha- re, roasted whole in the skin, and broke and divided it ; :md \ve. found it tender and ury meat. This is the hunter's kitchen: they stay not to pluck, to Hay, to bowel, nor lor any tools or vessel; but that •d which comes forth, for hungry men. In the hollow of the carcase the Beduwy found a little blood; this ho licked up greedily, with some of the fi-rth or cud, and mur- mured the mocking desert proverb ' I am Shurma (Cleft-lips) quoth the hare.' They do thus in ignorance; Amm Mohammed had done the like in his youth, and had not considered that the blood is forbidden. I said to him, " When a beast is killed, although ye let some blood at the throat, does not nearly all the gore remain in the body ? — and this you eat ! " He answered in a frank wonder, " Yes, thou sayest sooth ! the fore is left in the body, — and we eat it in the flesh ! well then can see no difference." The desert hare is small, and the delicate body parted among three made us but a slender break- fast Eyad in the same place found the gallery (with two holes) of a jerboa ; it is the edible spring rat of the droughty wild a little underground creature, not weighing two ounces, with very long hinder legs and a very long tufted tail, silken pelt, and white belly ; in form she resembles the pouched rats of Australia Eyad digged up the mine with his camel stick and, snatching the feeble prey, he slit her throat with a twig, and threw it on the embers; a moment after he offered ns morsels, but we would not taste. The jerboa and the w&bar ruminate, say the hunters ; Amm Mohammed told me, that they are often shot with the cud in the mouth. We loosed out the thelul, and sat on in this pleasant place of pasture Merjan lifted the shidad to relieve her, and " Look ! laughed he, if her hump be not risen ? " — The constraint of the lie, and our diligence in feeding her in the slow marches, made the sick beast to seem rather the better. Seeing her old brandmark was the dulbils, I enquired 'Have you robbed her then from the Heteym ? ' Eyad was amazed that I should know a wasm ! and he boasted that she was of the best blood of the Jl'-ndt (daughters of) et-Ti (or Tlh)\ he had bought her 88 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA from Heteym, a foal, for forty reals : she could' then outstrip the most theluls. Now she was a carrion riding beast of the Ageyl ; and such was Eyad's avarice that he had sent her down twice, freighted like a pack camel, with the Kheybar women's palm-plait to Medina; for which the Beduins there laughed him to scorn.— The Ti or Tih is a fabulous wild hurr, or dromedary male, in the Sherarat wilderness. 'He has only three ribs, they say, and runs with prodigious swiftness ; he may outstrip any horse.' The Sherarat are said to let their dromedaries stray in the desert, that haply they may be covered by the Tih ; and they pretend to discern his offspring by the token of the three ribs. The theluls of the Sherarat [an ' alien ' Arabian kindred] are praised above other in Western Arabia : Ibn Rashid's armed band are mounted upon the light and fleet Sher Aries. — Very excellent also, though of little stature, are the (Howeytat) dromedaries in' the Nefud of el-Arish. Eyad seemed to be a man of very honourable presence, with his comely Jew-like visage, and well-set full black beard ; he went well clad, and with the gallant carriage of the sheykhs of the desert. Busy-eyed he was, and a distracted gazer : his speech was less honest than smooth and well sounding. I enquired ' Wherefore he wore not the horns ? — the Beduin lovelocks should well become his manly [Annezy] beauty.' EyAd : " I have done with such young men's vanities, since my horn upon this side was shot away, and a second ball cropt the horn on my other ; — but that warning was not lost to me ! Ay billah ! I am out of taste of the Beduin life : one day we abound with the good of Ullah, but on the morrow our halal may be taken by an enemies' ghrazzu ! And if a man have not then good friends, to bring together somewhat for him again, wellah he must go a-begging." Eyad had been bred out of his own tribe, among Sham mar, and in this dira where we now came. His father was a substan- tial sheykh, one who rode upon his own mare ; and young Eyad rode upon a stallion. One day a strong foray of Heteym robbed the camels of his menzil, and Eyad among the rest galloped to meet them. The Heteym an (nomads well nourished with milk) are strong-bodied and manly fighters; they are besides well armed, more than the Beduw, and many are marksmen. Eyad bore before his lance two thelul riders ; and whilst he .tilted in among the foemen, who were all thelul riders, a bullet and a second ball cropt his braided locks ; he lost also his horse, and not his young life. " Eyad, thou playedest the lion ! " — " Aha ! and canst thou think what said the Heteym ? — ' By Ullah let that young rider of the horse come over to us when he will, and lie SIIAMMAU HOOT! 89 with our hare. 'tu, that they may bring forth valiant sons." IT- thought, since we saw him, that Kyada ilm Ajjueyn had been in that raid with them. " And when thou ha<t thy arrears, those hundreds of reals, wilt thou Iniy thee other hala! ? wo shall see thee prosperous and a sheykh again?" — " Prosperous, and a sheykh, it might well lie, were I ;i not her; but my head is broken, and I do this or that many times of a wrong judgment and fondly : — but •me a Beduwy again, nay ! I love no more such ha/.-r 1 will buy and sell ;it llayil. If I sell sliirl -clot h and cloaks rind iiiniiili/ti (kerchiefs) in the srik, all the Beduw will come to moreover, being a Hediiwy, I shall know how to trade with them for camels and smrdl cat 1 1*-. IJ.>ides I will lie Ibn Iiashid's i (one of his rajajil) and receive a salary from him every month, always sure, and ride in the ghraz/us, and in every one ••••thing!" — "We shall see thee thru a -hopkeeper! — but the best life, man, is to be a Beduwy." Merjiin: " Wt-11 s,-,id Khalil, the best life is with the Beduw." Eydd: "But I will none of it, and 'all is not KlnUhera and Tunis9;" — he could not expound to me his town-learned proverb. * * * * We set forward ; and after mid-day we came to six Shatnmar booths. The sheykh, a young man, Braitshhn, was known to Eyad. My rafiks rejoiced to see his coffee-pots in the ashpit; for they had not tasted kahwa (this fortnight) since we set out from K hey bar The beyt was large and lofty; which i< the Shammar and Annezy building wise. A mare grazed in • : a >ign that this was not a poor sheykh's household. The who came in from the neighbour tents were also known to : ; and I was not unknown, for one said presently, "Is not Khalil, the Nasrany?" — he had seen me at Hayil. We sho Id pass this day among them, and my rafiks loosed out the tli"!ul to pasture. In the afternoon an old man led us to his booth to drink more coffee; he had a son an Ageylyat Medina. '• I was lately there, said he. and I found my lad and his comrade eai ing their victuals Jtdf, wit hout samn ! — it is an ill service that cannot pay a man his bread." They mused seeing the Nasrany amongst them : — * Khalil, an adversary of Ullah, and yet like another man ! ' Eyad answered tli'-m in mirth, " So it seems that one might live well enough although he were a kafir ! " * * * ' * * We heard that Ibn Rashid was not at Hayil. "The Emir, they said, is ghn'zzui (upon an expedition) in the north 90 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA with the rajajll; the princes [as Hamud, Sleynian] are with him, and they lie encamped at Heyennieti ", — that is a place of wells in the Nefud, towards Jauf. The Shammar princes have fortified it with a block-house ; and a man or two are left in garrison, who are to shoot out at hostile ghrazzus : so that none shall draw water there, to pass over, contrary to the will of Ibn Rashid. We heard that Aneybar was left deputy at Hayil.— The sky was overcast whilst we sat, and a heavy shower fell suddenly. The sun soon shone forth again, and the hareem ran joyfully from the tents to iill their girbies, under the streaming granite rocks. The sheykh bade replenish the coffee pots, and give us a bowl of that sweet water to drink — Braitshan's mother boiled us a supper-dish of temnm : the nomad hospitality of milk was here scant, — but this is commonly seen in a coffee sheykh's beyt. Departing betimes on the morrow we journeyed in a country now perfectly known to Eyad The next hollow ground was like a bed of colocynth gourds, they are in colour and bigness as oranges. We marched two hours and came to a troop of camels : the herds were two young men of Shammar. They asked of the land backward, by which we had passed, * Was the rabia sprung, and which and which plants for pasture had we seen there ? ' Then one of them went to a milch naga to milk for us ; but the other, looking upon me, said, " Is not this Khalil, the Nasrany ? " [he too had seen me in Hayil] ! We were here abreast of the first outlying settlements of the Jebel ; and now looking on our left hand, we had a pleasant sight, between two rising grounds, of green corn plots. My raiika said, "It is Grussa, a corn hamlet, and you may see some of their women yonder ; they come abroad to gather green fodder for the well camels." A young man turned from beside them, with a grass-hook in his hand ; and ran hither to enquire tidings of us passengers. — Nor he nor might those women be easily discerned from Beduw ! After the first word he asked us for a galliun of tobacco; — ''But come, he said, with me to our kasur ; ye shall find dates and coffee, and there rest your- selves." He trussed on his neck what gathered herbs he had in his cloak, and ran before us to the settlement. We found their kasur to be poor low cottages of a single chamber — Gussa is a [new] desert grange of the Emir, inhabited only three months in the year, for the watering of the corn fields (here from six-fathom square well-pits sunk in the hard earth), till the harvest; then the husbandmen will go home to their villages : the site is in a small wady Here were but six households of fifteen or twenty persons, TOBACCO TIPPLKI '.»! in visited by tarki.-s (t> rdgy). Alt/ our host set before us dates with some of his spring butter and lel.an : I wondered at his ,-ilarrif y to welcome us, — as if we had been of old ucquant- nmv ! rPlu-n lie told them, that ' La-t night he dr< amr.l of a tarlsiy, whirl, should bring them tobacco ! ' — Even hereom- knew me) and said, " Is not this Klialil, the Nasrfmy? and he has a pnper from H>n Hash id, that none may molest him ; 1 myself saw .ied by the Kmir " " How sweet, they exclaimed, is dokh an when we taste it again !— wellah we are sherarib (tobacco tip- plers) " I said, " Ye have land, why then do ye not sow it ? " — " Well, we bib it; but to sow tobacco, and see the plant growing in our fields, that were an unseemly thing, makrtiha ! " When we left them near midday, they counselled us to pass by A yd/", another like ' dira,' or outlying corn settlement; we might juTive there ere nightfall. — Beyond their cornfields, I sawyoung palms set in the seyl-straud : but wanting water, many were already sere. Commonly the sappy herb is seen to spring in any hole (that was perhaps the burrow of some \vild creature) in the hard khala, though the waste soil be all bare : and the (lussa husbandmen had planted in like wise their palms that could not be watered ; the ownership was betwixt them and the Beduw As they had shown us we held our way, through a grey and russet granite country, with more often basalt than the former trap rocks. Eyad showed me landmarks, eastward, of the wells es-Sdkf, a summer water-station of Shammar. Under ji granite hill 1 saw lower courses of two cell-heaps, like those in the II arras ; and in another place eight or more breast-high wild flagstones of granite, set up in a row. — There was in heathen times an idol's house in these forlorn mountains. Seeing the discoloured he.id of a granite berg above us, the rafiks climbed there to look for water ; and finding some they filled our girby. When the sun was setting we came to a hollow path, which was likely to lead to Agella. The wilder- ness was again mahal, a rising wind ruffled about us, and clouds covered the stars with darkness which seemed to bereave the earth from under our footsteps. My companions would seek now some sheltered place, and slumber till morning ; but I encouraged them to go forward, to find the settlement to- night. We journeyed yet two hours, and I saw some house- building, though my companions answered me, it was a white rock : we heard voices and barking dogs soon after, and passed before a solitary nomad booth. We were come to the " dirat " el- Agella. Here were but two cabins of single ground-cham- bers and wells, and cornplots. The wind was high, we shouted 92 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA under the first of the house-walls ; and a man came forth who bade us good evening. He fetched us fuel, and we kindled a fire in the lee of his house, and warmed ourselves : then our host brought us dates and butter and leban, and said, * He was sorry he could not lodge us within doors, and the hour was late to cook anything.' Afterward, taking up his empty vessels, he left us to sleep. We had gone, they said, by a small settlement, Hdfirat Zeylul ; my companions had not been here before Hayil was now not far off, Eyad said ; " To-morrow, we will set forward in the jehcmma, that is betwixt the dog and the ivolf, — which is so soon, Khalil, as thou mayest distinguish between a hound and the wolf, (in the dawning)." — The northern blast (of this last night in March) was keen and rude, and when the day broke, we rose shivering ; they would not remove now till the warm sun was somewhat risen. Yet we had rested through this night better than our hosts ; for as we lay awake in the cold, we heard the shrieking of their well-wheels till the morning light. Merj&n : " Have the husbandmen or the Beduw the better life ? speak, Khalil, for we know that thou wast brought up among the Beduw." — "I would sell my palms, if I had any, to buy camels, and dwell with the nomads." — "And I," said he. As we set forward the a/jjfcj or sand-bearing wind encum- bered our eyes. A boy came along with us returning to el-Kasr, which we should pass to-day: — so may any person join himself to what travelling company he will in the open Arabic countries. The wilderness eastward is a plain full of granite bergs, whose heads are often trappy basalt ; more seldom they are crumbling needles of slaty trap rock. Before noon, we were in sight of el-Kasr, under Ajja, which Merjan in his loghra pronounced Ejja : we had passed from the mahal, and a spring greenness was here upon the face of the desert There are circuits of the common soil about the desert villages where no nomads may drive their cattle upon pain of being accused to the Emir : such township rights are called h'md [confer Numb, xxxv 2-5] We saw here a young man of el-Kasr, riding round upon an ass to gather fuel, and to cut fodder for his well camels. Now he crossed to us and cried welcome, and alighted ; that was to pull out a sour milkskin from his wallet — of which he poured us out to drink, saying, " You passengers may be thirsty ? " Then taking forth dates, he spread them on the ground before us, and bade us break our fasts : so remounting cheerfully, he said, " We shall meet again this evening in the village " The rafiks loosed out the thelul, and we lay down in the sand of a seyl without shadow from the sun, to repose awhile. The TI1K WALL chatted ; ;iml \\hi-n tln> village hoy h»-;inl their talk, thai there waa a Dowlai at Medina,— " Kl-Medina! criefl In1, /•"* tninii'lKi ! " K.ad an«l M'TJa.u looked up like saints, with beat.ilir. \i ml told him, with a religions ' lli« had made himself ;i kalir! for kii'-\v In- not. that, el-Medina, is one of the two sanctuaii Th»-y added that word <,f the sighing Mohammed-m piety, " Ullah, (muiir-ha, the Lord build ii]) B&edilia"— I have lizard some IJeduwy put tip 'mdbrak M>7/// ni-.\>:!>//, the oonohing place of the prop dromedary,' [Christians in the Aral-ic border-lands will say in their sleeve, Cllnli i/n!i«rrnlc.-li<i, * The Lord consume her with fire!'] It was iie\\ lore to the poor lad, who answered half aghast, that 'he meant not to speak anything amiss, and he took refuse in Ullah.' I Ie drew out parched locusts from his scrip, and fell to eat again : locu>t clouds had passed over the Jebel, he said, two months before, but the damage had been light. The tola, or new fruit-stalks of their palms, were not yet put forth ; we saw also their corn standing green : so that the harvest in Jebel Shammar may be nearly three weeks later than at Kheybar and Medina. At half-afternoon we made forward towards the (orchard) walls of el-Kasr, fortified with the lighthouse-like towers of a former age. Eyad said, 'And if we set out betimes on the morrow, we might arrive in llayil, It-'Cl Imzza, about this time.' The villagers were now at rest in their houses, in the hottest of the day, and no man stirring. We went astray in the outer blind lanes of the clay village, with broken walls and cavernous ground of filthy sunny dust. Europeans look upon the Arabic squalor with loathing : to our senses it is heathenish. Some children brought us into the town. At the midst is a small open place with a well-conduit, where we watered the thelul : that water is sweet, but lukewarm, as all ground- water in Arabia. Then we went to sit down, where the high western wall cast already a little shadow, in the public view ; looking that some householder would call us. Men stood in their cottage thresholds to look at us Bednins: then one approached, — it seems these villagers take the charge in turn, and we stood up to meet him. He enquired, "What be ye, and whence come ye, and whither will ye ? " we sat down after our answer, and he left us. He came again and said '.sum ! ' and we rose and followed him. The villager led us into his cottage yard ; here we sat on the earth, and he brought us dates, with a little butter and thin whey : when we had eaten he returned, and we were called to the village Kahwa. Here also they knew me, for some had seen me in Hayil. These 94 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA morose peasants cumbered me with religious questions ; till I was most weary of their insane fanaticism El-Kasr, that is Kasr el-Asheruwdt, is a village of two hundred and fifty to three hundred souls ; the large graveyard, without the place, is a wilderness of wild headstones of many genera- tions. Their wells are sunk to a depth (the Beduins say) of thirty fathoms ! We now heard sure tidings of the Emir ; his camp had been removed to Hazzel, that is an aed or jau (watering place made in hollow ground) not distant, eastwards, from Shekaky in the Ruwalla country (where was this year a plentiful rabia), ' and all Shammar was with him and the Emir's cattle.' They were not many days out from Hayil, and the coming again of the Prince and his people would not be for some other weeks. These are the pastoral, and warlike spring excursions of the Shammar Princes. A month -or two they lie thus in tents like the Beduw ; but the end of their loitering idleness is a vehement activity: for as ever their cattle are murubba, they will mount upon some great ghrazzu, with the rajajil and a cloud of Beduw, and ride swiftly to surprise their enemies ; and after that they come again (commonly with a booty) to Hayil. — All the desert above Kasr was, they told us, mahal. The rabia was this year upon the western side of Ajja ; and the Emir's troops of mares and horses had been sent to graze about Mogug. Eyad enquired, * If anything had been heard of the twenty Ageyl riders from Medina ! ' The villagers of Kasr are Beiiy Temim : theirs is a very ancient name in Arabia They were of old time Beduins and villagers, and their settled tribesmen were partly of the nomad life ; now they are only villagers They are more robust than the Beduin neighbours, but churlish, and of little hospitality. In the evening these villagers talked tediously with us strangers, and made no kahwa. Upon a side of their public coffee hall was a raised bank of clay gravel, the man&m or travellers' bed- stead, a very harsh and stony lodging to those who come in from the austere delicacy of the desert ; where in nearly every place is some softness of the pure sand. The nights, which we had found cold in the open wilderness, were here warm in the shelter of walls — When we departed ere day, I saw many of these Arabian peasants sleeping abroad in their mantles ; they lay stretched like hounds in the dust of the village street. At sunrise we saw the twin heads of the Sumra Hayil, Eyad responded to all men's questions; "We go with this ILhalil to Hayil, at the commandment of the Bashat el-Medina ; I'YAIVS LICHT IIKAI) 95 niul of his sealed letter to ll>n IJashid; but we know not what is in the writing, which may be to cut off all our heads!' — also I s;ii<l in my h«-;irt, ' The Turks are treacl ous ! ' — .Hut should 1 break the Pasha's seal? No! I would sooner hope fora fair event of that hazard. This sealed letter of the governor of Medin.-i. \\ as opened after my returning from Arabia, at a Hritish Consulate ; and it contained no more than his commending me to ' Tin" Win/kit, ' Jim Iv'a.-Md, and the request that ho would send me forward on my journey. I walked in the mornings two hours, and as much at after- noon, that my companions might ride ; and to spare their sickly thelul I climbed to the saddle, as she stood, like a Beduwy : but the humanity which I showed them, to my possibility, hardened their ungenerous hearts. Seeing them weary, and Ey&d complaining that his soles were worn to the quick, I went on walking barefoot to Gofar, and bade them ride still. — There I beheld once more (oh ! blissful sight,) the plum trees and almond trees blossoming in an Arabian oasis. We met with no one in the long main street ; the men were now in the fields, or sleeping out the heat of the day in their houses. We went by the Mandkh, and I knew it well ; but my companions, who had not been this way of late years, were gone on, and so we lost our breakfast. When I called they would not hear ; they went to knock at a door far beyond. They sat down at last in the street's end, but we saw no man. " Let us to Hayil, and mount thou, Khalil ! " said the raiiks. We went on through the ruins of the northern quarter, where I showed them the road ; and come near the desert side, 1 took the next way, but they trod in another. I called them, they called to me, and I went on riding. Upon this Eyad's light head turn- ing, whether it were he had not tasted tobacco this day, or because be was weary and fasting, he began to curse me ; and came running like a madman, ' to take the thelul.' When I told him I would not suffer it, he stood aloof and cursed on, and seemed to have lost his understanding. A mile beyond he returned to a better mind, and acknowledged to me, that * until he had drunk tobacco of a morning his heart burned within him, the brain rose in his pan, and he felt like a fiend.' — It were as easy to contain such a spirit as to bind water ! I rode not a little pensively, this third time, in the beaten way to Hayil; and noted again (with abhorrence, of race) at every few hours' end their "kneeling places"; — those little bays of stones set out in the desert soil, where wayfarers over- taken by the canonical hours may patter the formal prayer of 96 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA their religion. — About midway we met the morning passengers from Hayil ' and looking upon me with the implacable eyes of their fanaticism, every one who went by uttered the same hard words to my companions, ' Why bring ye him again ? ' Ambar, Aneybar's brother, came next, riding upon an ass in a com- pany ; he went to Gofar, where he had land and palms. But the worthy Galla libertine greeted us with a pleasant good humour, — I was less it might be in disgrace of the princely household than of the fanatical populace We saw soon above the brow of the desert the white tower-head of the great donjon of the castle, and said Merjan, " Some think that the younger children of Telal be yet alive therein. They see the world from their tower, and they are unseen." Upon our right hand lay the palms in the desert, es-Sherafa, founded by Metasb : — so we rode on into the town. We entered Hayil near the time of the afternoon prayers. Because the Emir was absent, there was no business ! the most shops were shut. The long market street was silent ; and their town seemed a dead and empty place. I saw the renegade Abdullah sitting at a shop door ; then Ibrahim and a few more of my acquaintance, and lastly the schoolmaster. The unsavoury pedant stood and cried with many deceitful gestures, " Now, welcome ! and blessed be the Lord ! — Khalil is a Moslem ! " (for else he guessed I had not been so foolhardy as to re-enter Ibn Rashid's town.) At the street's end I met with Aneybar, lieu- tenant now in (empty) Hayil for the Emir ; he came from the Kasr carrying in his hand a gold-hilted back-sword : the great man saluted me cheerfully and passed by. I went to alight before the castle, in the empty Meshab, which was wont to be full of the couching theluls of visiting Beduins : but in these days since Ibn Rashid was ghrazzai, there came no more Beduins to the town. About half the men of Hayil were now in the field with Ibn Rashid ; for, besides his salaried rajajtl, even the salesmen of the suk are the Prince's servants, to ride with him , This custom of military service has discouraged many traders of the East Nejd provinces, who had otherwise been willing to try their fortunes in Hayil. Some malignants of the castle ran together at the news, that the Nasrany was come again. I saw them stand in the tower gate, with the old coffee-server ; " Heigh ! (they cried) it is he indeed ! now it may please Ullah he will be put to death," — Whilst I was in this astonishment, Aneybar returned ; he had but walked some steps to find his wit. " Salaam aleyk ! " " Aleykdm es-salaam" he answered me again, betwixt good will and wondering, and cast back the head; for they have all A PKINVKLY CHILI) 97 learned to strut like the Kiniiv. Aii"yl>:n- jr-ive mo his right hand with a, lordly L'Taoo : then- wa- tin- old peace of bread and lietwixt iis. --"From whence, Khalil ? and ye twain with him what ho ye ?— well go to the coffee hall! and tln-ro we will more." Aly el-A\id went by us, coming from his house, and saluted me heartily. NVht'ii we were seated with Aneybar in the great kahwa, he ask IM! a«jain, "And you IJoduw with him, what be ye?" responded with a craven humility : " We are Heteym." — "Nay yo are not Heteym." — "Tell them, I said, both what ye be, and who sent you hither." Einnl: " We are Ageyl from Medina, and thi« I'a^ha sent ns to Kheybar to convey this Khalil, with a letter to Ibn Rashid."— " Well, Ageyl, and what tribesmen?" — "We must acknowledge we are Beduins, we are Auajy." A)i''i/b<tr: "And, Khalil, where are your letters?" — I gave him a letter from Abdullah es-Siruan, and the Pasha's sealed letter. Aneybar, who had not learned to read, gave them to a secretary, a sober and friendly man, who perusing the unflat- tering titles " To the shcykh Ibn RaslM" returned them to me unopened. — Mufarrij, the steward, now came in; he took me friendly by the hand, and cried, " Sum ! " and led us to the mothif. There a dish was set before us of Ibn Kashid's rusty tribute dates, and — their spring hospitality — a bowl of small camel leban. One of the kitchen servers showed me a piece of ancient copper money, which bore the image of an eagle ; it had been found at Hayil, and was Roman. The makhzau was assigned us in which I had formerly lodged ; and my rafiks left me to visit their friends in the t • >w n. Children soon gathered to the threshold and took courage to revile me. Also there came to me the princely child Abd el- Aziz, the orphan of Metaab : I saw him fairly grown in these three months; he swaggered now like his uncle with a lofty but IK*! disdainful look, and he resembles the Emir Mohammed, princely child stood and silently regarded me, he clapt a hand to his little sword, but would not insult the stranger; so .id : " Why returned, Khalil Nasrany ? " — " Because I hoped it would be pleasant to thine uncle, my darling." — " Nay, Khali I ! nay, Khalil ! the Emir says thou art not to remain lu'i-e." 1 saw Zeyd the gate-keeper leading Merjan by the hand ; and he enquired of the lad, who was of a vindictive nature, of all that had happened to me since the day I arrived at Khoybar. Such fjuostions and answers could only be to my hurt : it was a danger I had foreseen, amongst ungenerous Ar.v YOU II. Q 98 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA We found Aneybar in the coffee-hall at evening : " Khalil, he said, we cannot send thee forward, and thou must depart to-morrow." — " Well, send me to the Emir in the North with the Medina letter, if I may not abide his coming in Hayil." — "Here rest to-night, and in the morning (he shot his one palm from the other) depart ! — Thou stay here, Khalil ! the people threatened thee to-day, thou sawest how they pressed on thee at your entering." — " None pressed upon me, many saluted me." — " Life of Ullah ! but I durst not suffer thee to remain in Hayil, where so many are ready to kill thee, and I must answer to the Emir : sleep here this night, and please Ullah without mishap, and mount when we see the morning light." — Whilst we were speaking there came in a messenger, who arrived from the Emir in the northern wilderness : " And how does the Emir, exclaimed Aneybar, with an affected heartiness of voice ; and where left you him enca'mped ? " The messenger, a worthy man of the middle age, saluted me, without any religious mis- liking, he was of the strangers at Hayil from the East provinces. Aneybar : " Thou hast heard, Khalil ? and he showed me these three pauses of his malicious wit, on his fingers, To-morrow ! — The light !— Depart ! "— " Whither ? "— " From whence thou earnest ; — to Kheybar : art thou of the din (their religion) ? " — " No, I am not." — " And therefore the Arabs are impatient of thy life : wouldst thou be of the din, thou mightest live always amongst them." — " Then send me to-morrow, at my proper charge, towards el-Kasim." They were displeased when I mentioned the Dowla: Aneybar answered hardly, " What Dowla ! here is the land of the Aarab, and the dominion of Ibn Rashid. — He says Kasim : but there are no Beduw in the town (to convey him). Khalil ! we durst not ourselves be seen in Kasim," and he made me a shrewd sign, sawing with the forefinger upon his black throat. — "Think not to deceive me, Aneybar; is not a sister of the Emir of Boreyda, a wife of Mohammed ibn Rashid ? and are not they your allies ? " — " Ullah ! (exclaimed some of them), he knows everything." — Aneybar : "Well ! well ! but it cannot be, Khalil : how sayest thou, sherif ? " — This was an old gentleman -beggar, with grey eyes, some fortieth in descent from the Neby, clad like a Turkish citizen, and who had arrived to-day from Medina, where he dwelt. His was an adventurous and gainful trade of hypocrisy: three months or four in a year he dwelt at home ; in the rest he rode, or passed the seas into every far land of the Mohammedan world. In each country he took up a new concubine ; and whereso he passed he glosed so fructuously, and showed them AN OLD OBNTLBMAN P.KCOAR OF MKhlNA 99 liis large letters patent from kings and primvs, and was of that honourable presence, that he was bidden to the best houses, as becomrth a religious sheykh of tin* I Inly City, and a nephew of the apostle of I'llah: so lie received their pious alms and returned to tin- illuminated Medina. Bokhara was a /•///. flint for this holy man in his circuit, and so were all the CJ beyond as far as (Viltul. In Mohammedan India, he went a begging long enough to learn tho vulgar language. I he visited Stambul, and followed the [not] glorious Mohammedan arms in Kurope : and the Sultan of Islam had bestowed upon him his imperial firman. — Jle showed me the dedalc engp :ment, with the sign manual of the Calif upon a half fat horn of court paper. And with this broad charter he was soon to go again upon an Indian voya - When Aneybar had asked his counsel, " Wellah yd el- Noh'ifutk (answered this hollow spirit), and I say the same, it cannot be; for what has this man to do in el-Ka.-im ? and what does he wandering up and down in all the land; (he added under his breath), wa yildiib el-bildd, and he writes up the country." Aneybar: "Well, to-morrow, Khalil, depart; and thou Eyad carry him back to Kheybar." — Eydd: "But it would be said there, ' Why hast thou brought him again ? ' \vellah I durst not do it, Aneybar." Aneybar mused a little. I answered them, " You hear his words; and if this rafik were willing, yet so feeble is their thelul, you have seen it your- selves, that she could not carry me." — Eydd : " Wellah ! she is not able."- -u Besides, I said, if you cast me back into hazards, the Dowla may require my blood, and you must every enter some of their towns as Bagdad and Medina : and when you send to India with your horses, will you not be in the power of my fellow citizens?" — The Sherlf : "He says truth, 1 have been there, and I know the Engleys and their Dowia : now let me speak to this man in a tongue which he will under- stand,— he spoke somewhat in Hindostani — what ! an Engleysy understand not the language of el-Hind? " — Aneybar: "Thou 1 (one of our subject Bed nine) ! it is not permitted thee to nay ; I command you upon your heads to convey Khalil to Kheybar; and you are to depart to-morrow. — Heigh-ho! it ild be the hour of prayer! " Some said, They had heard the itkin already: Aneybar rose, the Sherif rose solemnly and all the rest ; and they went out to say their last prayers in the great niesjid. * * * * * * When the morning sun rose I had as lief that my night 100 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA had continued for ever, There was no going forward for me, nor going backward, and I was spent with fatigues. — We went over to the great coffee-hall. Aneybar sat there, and beside him was the old dry-hearted sherif, who drank his morrow's Sup with an holy serenity. " Eyad affirms, I said, that he cannot, he dare not, and that he will not convey me again to Kheybar." — " To Kheybar thou goest, and that presently/" Eyad was leading away his sick thelul to pasture under Ajja, but the Moghreby gatekeeper withheld him by force That Moor's heart, as at niy former departure from Ilayil, was full of brutality. " Come, Zeyd, I said to him, be we not both "Western men and like countrymen among these Beduw ? " — " Only become a Moslem, and we would all love thee ; but we know thee to be a most hardened Nasrany — Kb alii comes (he said to the bystanders) to dare us ! a Nasrany, here in the land of the Moslemin ! Was it not enough that we once sent thee away in safety, and comest thou hither again ! " Round was this burly man's head, with a brutish visage ; he had a thick neck, unlike the shot-up growth of the slender Nejd Arabians ; the rest of him an unwieldy carcase, and half a cart-load of tripes. In the absence of the princely family, my soul was in the hand of this cyclops of the Meshab. I sat to talk peaceably with him, and the brute-man many times lifted his stick to smite the kafir ; but it was hard for Zeyd, to whom I bad sometime shown a good turn; to chafe himself against me. The opinions of the Arabs are ever divided, and among tbree is commonly one mediator : — it were blameworthy to defend the cause of an adversary of Ullah ; and yet some of the people of Hayil that now gathered about us with mild words were a mean for me. The one-eyed stranger stood by, he durst not affront the storm ; but when Zeyd left me for a moment, he whispered in my ear, that I should put them off, whom he called in con- tempt ' beasts without understanding, Beduw ! ' — " Ouly seem thou to consent with them, lest they kill thee ; say * Mohammed is the apostle of Ullah,' and afterward, when thou art come into sure countries, hold it or leave it at thine own liking. This is not to sin before God, when force oppresses us, and there is no deliverance ! " Loitering persons and knavish boys pressed upon me with insolent tongues: but Ibrahim of Hayil, he who before so friendly accompanied me out of the town, was ready again to "befriend me, and cried to them, " Back with you ! for shame, so to thrust upon the man ! O fools, have ye not seen him before ? " Amongst them came that Abdullah of the broken arm, the boy- FANATIC IIAVIL 101 f TTamud. I SAW liiin ;/n,\v taller, and now he wore a lit tin l>,ick -sword ; winch 1m pulkd out a<_rain-f, in*-, ; "0 thoti cursed Nasrany, that wilt not leave tliy miacreanc — The one-eyed stranger whispered, " c«nt,ent th«-m ! it is hut waste of bivath to reason with tin-in. Do ye — he said to the people — stand back! I would speak with this r. I we may yet see some happy event, it may please Ullah." I In whispered in my ear, " High ! there will be some mischief ; only pay thou wilt be a Moslem, and quit thyself of them. Show thyself now a prudent man, and let me not see thee die for a word ; afterward, when thou hast escaped their hands, settin stna, sixty years to them, and yulaan Ullah abu-hum, the Lord confound the fat her of them all! Now, hast thou conseii' —ho ! ye people, to the mesjid ! go and prepare the muzayyin : Khalil is a Moslem ! " — The lookers-on turned and were going, then stood still ; they believed not his smooth words of that obstinate misbeliever. But when I said to them, " No need to go ! " — " Aha ! they cried, the accursed Nasrany, Ullah curse his parentage ! " — Zeyd (the porter) : " But I am thinking we shall make this (man) a Moslem and circumcise him ; go in one of you and fetch me a knife from the Kasr : " but none moved, for the people dreaded the Emir and Hamud (reputed my friend). " Come, Khalil, for one thing, said Zeyd, we will be friends with thee ; say, there is none God but the Lord and His apostle is Mohammed : and art thou poor we will also enrich thee." — " I count your silver as the dust of this meshab: — but which of you miserable Arabs would give a man anything ? Though ye gave me this castle, and the leyt el-mdl, the pits and the sacks of hoarded silver which ye say to be therein, I could not change my faith." — "Akhs — akhs — akhs — akhs ! " was uttered from a multitude of throats : I had contemned, in one breath, the right way in religion and the heaped riches of this world ! and with horrid outcries they detested the antichrist. — " Eigh, Nasrauy ! said a voice, and what found you at Khey- bar, ha? " — " Plenty of dates 0 man, and fever." — " The more is the pity, cried they all, that he died not there ; but akhs ! these cursed Nasranies, they never die, nor sicken as other men : and surely if this (man) were not a Nasrany, he had been dead long ago." — " Ullah curse the father of him ! " murmured many a ferocious voice. Zeyd the porter lifted his huge fist; but Aneybar appeared coming from the suk, and Ibrahim cries, " Hold there ! and strike not Khalil."— Aneybar : " What ado is here, and (to Zeyd) why is not the Nasrany mounted ? — did I not tell thee ? " — " His Beduw were not ready ; one of them is gone to bid his kinsfolk farewell, and I gave the other leave to 102 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA go and buy somewhat in the suk." — Aneybar: " And you people will ye not go your ways ? — Sheytan ! what has any of you to do with the Nasrany ; Ullah send a punishment upon you all, and upon him also." I said to Aneybar, " Let Eyad take new wages of me and threaten him, lest he forsake me." — " And what received he before ? " — " Five reals." — " Then give him other five reals. [Two or three had sufficed for the return journey ; but this was his malice, to make me bare in a hostile land.] When the thelul is come, mount, — and Zeyd see thou that the payment is made ; " and loftily the Galla strode from me. — Cruel was the slave's levity ; and when I had nothing left for their cupidity how might I save myself out of this dreadful country ? — Zeyd : "Give those five reals, ha! make haste, or by God — ! " — and with an ugh ! of his bestial anger he thrust anew his huge fist upon my breast I left all to the counsel of the moment, for a last need I was well armed; but with a blow, putting to his great strength, he might have slain me. — Ibrahim drew me from them " Hold*! he said, I have the five reals, where is that Eyad, and I will count them in his hand, Khalil, rid thyself with this and come away, and I am with you." I gave him the silver. Ibrahim led on, with the bridle of the thelul in his hand, through the market street, and left me at a shop door whilst he went to seek Aneybar. Loitering persons gathered at the threshold where I sat ; the worst was that wretched young Abdullah el-Abeyd ; when he had lost his breath with cursing, he drew his little sword again : but the bystanders blamed him, and I entered the makhzan. The tra desman , who was a Meshedy, asked for my galliur< and bade me be seated ; he filled it with hameydy, that honey-like tobacco and peaceable remedy of human life. " What tidings, quoth he, in the world ? — We have news that the Queen of the Engleys is deceased ; and now her son is king in her room." Whilst I sat pensive, to hear his words ! a strong young swords- man, who remained in Hayil, came suddenly in and sat down. I remembered his comely wooden face, the fellow was called a Moghreby, and was not very happy in his wits. He drew and felt down the edge of his blade : so said Hands-without-head — as are so many among them, and sware by Ullah : " Yesterday, when Khalil entered, I was running with this sword to kill him, but some withheld me ! " The tradesman responded, " What has he done to be slain by thee ? " Swordsman: "And I am glad that I did it not : " — he seemed now little less rash to favour me, than before to have murdered me. Aneybar, who this while strode unquietly up and down, in TYRANNY OF ANEYI5AK 103 tln> side streets, (lu- would not be seen to attend nj>oii the any), appeared now with Ibrahim at the, door. The Galla deputy of ll>n Raahld entered and sat down, with a uii: rattling of his aword of oflire in the scabbard, and laid blade over his kn.-rs. .lbr;diirn r«-«jiicMl<-d liim to inaist no more upon the uniquitous payment out of Klialil's empty purse, or at least to make it less. " No, fire reals! " (exclaimed the slave in authority.) lie looked very fiercely upon it, and clattered the s\\ord. "(Jod will require it of thee ; and give me a schedule of safe conduct, Aneybar." He granted, the trades- man readied him an hand-breadth of paper, and Ibrahim wrote, ' No man to molest this Nasrdny.' Aneybar inked his signet of brass, and sealed it solemnly, ANEYBAR IBN RASHID. " The sherif (I said) is going to Bagdad, he will pass by the camp of the Kmir : and there are some Beduw at the gate — I liave now heard it, that are willing to convey me to the North, for three reals. If thou compel me to go with Eyad, thou knowest that I cannot but be cast away : treachery 0 Aneybar ih punished even in this world ! May not a stranger pass by your Prince's country ? be reasonable, that I may depart from you to-day peaceably, and say, the Lord remember thee for good." The Galla sat arrogantly rattling the gay back-sword in his lap, with a countenance composed to the princely awe ; and at every word of mine he clapped his black hand to the hilt. When I ceased he found no answer, but to cry with tyranny, "Have done, or else by God — " ! and he showed me a hand-breadth or two of his steel out of the scabbard. •• \Yhat! he exclaimed, wilt thou not yet be afraid?" Now Eyad entered, and Ibrahim counted the money in his hand : Aneybar delivered the paper to Eyad. — "The Emir gave his passport to me." — " But I will not let thee have it, mount ! and Ibrahim thou canst see him out of the town." At the end of the suk the old parasite seyyid or sherif was sitting square-legged before a threshold, in the dust of the street. "Out, I said in passing, with thy reeds and paper ; and I will give thee a writing ? " The old fox in a turban winced, and he murmured some koran wisdom between his broken teeth. — There trotted by us a Beduwy upon a robust thelul. " I was then coming to you, cried the man ; and I will convey the Nasrany to el-Irak for five reals." Eydd : " Well, and if it !"• with Aney bar's allowance, I will give up the five reals, which I hav«« ; and so shall we all have done well, and Khalil may d«- part in peace. Khalil sit here by the thelul, whilst I and this B-.'duwy go back to Aneybar, and make the accord, if it be 104 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA possible ; wellah ! I am sorry for thy sake." — A former acquaint- ance, a foreigner from el-Hasa, came by and stayed to speak with me ; the man was one of the many industrious strangers in Hayil, where he sewed cotton quilts for the richer households. "This people, quoth he, are untaught! all things are in the power of Ullah : and now farewell, Khalil, and God give thee a good ending of this adventure." Eyad returned saying, Aneybar would not be entreated, and that he had reviled the poor Beduwy. " Up, let us hasten from them ; and as for Merjan, I know not what is become of him. I will carry .thee to Gofar, and leave thee there. — No, wellah Khalil, I am not treacherous, but I durst not, I cannot, return with thee to Kheybar : at Gofar I will leave thee, or else with the Aarab." — " If thou betray me, betray me at the houses of hair, and not in the settlements ; but you shall render the silver." — " Nay, I have eaten it ; yet I will do the best that I may for thee." We journeyed in the beaten path towards Gofar ; and after going a mile, " Let us wait, quoth Eyad, and see if this Merjan be not coming." At length we saw it was he who approached us with a bundle on his head, — he brought temmn and dates, which his sister (wedded in the town) had given him. Eyad drew out a leathern budget, in which was some victual for the way that he had received from the Mothif, (without my know- ledge) : it was but a little barley meal and dates of ill kind, in all to the value of about one shilling. We sat down, Merjan spread his good dates, and we breakfasted ; thus eating together I hoped they might yet be friendly, though only misfortunes could be before me with such unlucky rafiks. I might have journeyed with either of them but not with both together. Eyad had caught some fanatical suspicion in Hayil, from the mouth of the old Medina sherif ! — that the Nasara encroached continually upon the dominion of the Sultan, and that Khalil's nation, although not enemies, were not well-wishers, in their hearts, to the religion of Islam. When I would mount ; "Nay, said Eyad, beginning to swagger, the returning shall not be as our coming ; I will ride myself." I said no more ; and cast thus again into the wilderness I must give them line. — My companions boasted, as we went, of promises made to them both in Hayil. — Aneybar had said, that would they return hither sometime, from serving the Dowla, they might be of Ibn Rash id's (armed) service; — Eyad an horseman of the Emir's riders, and Merjan one of the rajajil. Two women coming out from Hayil overtook us, as they COM1-; TO GOPAB 105 went t<» f Jofar. "The Lord he praised (said the poor creatures, with .'i uoinanly kindness) that it was not worse. Ah' thon, — is not thy name Klialil? — they in yonder town an- jnhiih'i.ni, m»-n of tyrannous violence, that will cut, of]' a man's h* ad for a light displeasure. KiLrh me! did not he SO that, is now Krnir, unto all his l>rother\s rhildivn ? Thou art well r,ome froni them, i are hard and cru< //. And what is this that the pe cry, ' Out upon the Naxi'finy ! ' The Nasfira be better than tlm lemin. Etfdd: "It is they tin m-. Ivs that are the Na:- wellah, /7/-wA////.?w, full of malignity." " It is the Meshahada that I hate, said Mrrjan. may L'llah confound them." It happ< that a serving boy in the public kitchen, one of the patients whom I treated (freely) at my l'«niM-r sojourning in ll/ivii, was I In-other. '1 h.- Mesh;ihadies he said had l>e.-n of Aney- bar's counsel against me. — Who has travelled in Phoenician and Samaritan Syria may call to mind the inhumanity [the last wretchedness and worldly wickedness of irrational religions, — that man should not eat and drink with his brother !] of those Persian or Assyrian colonists, the Metdwali. Forsaking the road we went now towards the east-building of Gofar : — the east and west settlements lie upon two veins of ground-water, a mile or more asunder. The western oasis, where passes the common way, is the greater ; but Eyad went to find some former acquaintance in the other with whom we might lodge. Here also we passed by forsaken palm-grounds and ruinous orchard houses, till we came to the inhabited ; and they halted before the friend's dar. Eyad and Merjan- sat down to see if the good man (of an inhospitable race, the B. Temim), would come forth to welcome us. Children gathered to look on, and when some of them knew me, they began to fleer at the Nasrany. Merjan cursed them, as only Semites can find it in their hearts, and ran upon the little mouthing knaves with his camel-stick ; but now our host coming down his alley saluted Eyad, and called us to the house. His son bore in my bags to the kahwa : and they strewed down green garden stalks before the thelul and wild herbage. A bare dish of dates was set before us ; and the good-man made us thin coffee : bye and bye his neighbours entered. All these were B. Temim, peasant-like bodies in whom is no natural urbanity ; but they are lumpish drudgers, living honestly of their own — and that is with a sparing hand. When I said to one of them, " I see you all big of bone and stature, unlike the (slender) inhabitants of Hayil ! " — He answered, dispraising them, " The Shammar are Beduw ! " Whilst we sat, there came in three swarthy strangers, who riding by to Hayil alighted here 106 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA also to drink coffee. — They carried up their zika to the Prince's treasury ; for being few and distant Aarab, his exactors were not come to them these two years : they were of Harb, and their wandering ground was nigh Medina. They mounted again immediately; and from Hayil they would ride continually to Ibn Rashld in the northern wilderness. My rafiks left me alone without a word ! I brought in there- fore the thelul furnitures, lest they should lead away their beast and forsake me. Eyad and Merjan feared no more that they must give account for me ; and their wildness rising at every word, I foresaw how next to desperate, must be my further passage with them : happily for my weary life the milk-season was now in the land. * * * CHAPTER VI THE SHAMMAR AND HARB DESERTS IN NEJD AT daybreak we departed from Gofar: this by my reckoning was the first week in April. Eyad loosed out our sick thelul to pasture; and they drove her slowly forward in the desert plain till the sun went down behind Ajja, when we halted under bergs of grey granite. These rooks are fretted into bosses and caves more than the granite of Sinai : the heads of the granite crags are commonly trap rock. Eyad, kindling a fire, heated his iron ramrod, and branded their mangy thelul. — I had gone all day on foot ; and the Ageylies threatened every hour to cast down my bags, though now light as Merjan's temmn, which she also carried. We marched four miles further, and espied a camp fire; and coming to the place we found a ruckling troop of camels couched for the night, in the open kh&la. The herd-lad and his brother sat sheltering in the hollow bank of a seyl, and a watch-fire of sticks was burning before them. The hounds of the Aarab follow not with the herds, the lads could not see beyond their fire-light, and our salaam startled them : then falling on our knees we sat down by them, — and with that word we were acquainted. The lads made some of their nagas stand up, and they milked full bowls and frothing over for us. We heard a night-fowl shriek, where we had left our bags with the thelul : my rafiks rose and ran back with their sticks, for the bird (which they called sirrttk, a thief) might, they said, steal something. When we had thus supped, we lay down upon the pleasant seyl sand to sleep. As the new day lightened we set forward. A little further we saw a flock of some great sea-fowl grazing before us, upon their tal. shanks in the wilderness. — I mused that (here in Nejd) they were but a long flight, on their great waggle wings, from the far seabord ; a morrow's sun might see them beyond this burning dust of Arabia! At first my light-headed rafiks mistook them for sheep-flocks, although only black fleeces be 108 WANDERINGS IN AEABIA seen in these parts of Nejd : then having kindled their gun- matches, they went creeping out to approach them ; but bye and bye I saw the great fowl flag their wings over the wide desert, and the gunners returning. — I asked " from whence are these birds?" — " Wellah from Mecca," [that is from the middle Ked Sea bord.] This soil was waste gravel, baked hard in the everlasting drought, and glowing under the soles of our bare feet ; the air was like a name, in the sun. An infirm travellefwere best to ride always in the climate of Arabia : now by the cruelty of my companions, I went always on foot ; and they themselves would ride. And marching in haste, I must keep them in view, or else they had forsaken the Nasrany : my plight was such that I thought, after a few days of such efforts, I should rest for ever. So it drew to the burning midst of the afternoon, when, what for the throes- in my chest, I thought that the heart would burst. The hot blood at length spouted from my nostrils : I called to the rafiks who went riding together before me to halt, that I might lie down awhile, but they would not hear. Then I took up stones, to receive the dropping gore, lest I should come with a bloody shirt to the next Aarab : besides it might work some alteration in my rafiks' envenomed spirits ! — in this haste there fell blood on my hands. When I overtook them, they seeing my bloody hands drew bridle in astonishment ! Merj&n : " Now is not this a kafir ! " — "Are ye not more than kafirs, that abandon the rafik in the way ? " They passed on now more slowly, and I went by the side of the thelul. — "If, I added, ye abandon the rafik, what honourable man will hereafter receive you into their tents ? " Merjan answered, "There is keeping of faith betwixt the Moslemm, but not with an enemy of Ullah ! " They halted bye and bye and Eyad dismounted : Merjan who was still sitting upon the thelul's back struck fire with a flint : I thought it might be for their galliuns, since they had bought a little sweet hameydy, with my money, at Hayil : but Eyad kindled the cord of his matchlock. I said, "This is what?'* They answered, " A hare ! " — " Where is your hare ? I say, show me this hare ! " Eyad had yet to put priming to the eye of his piece ; they stumbled in their words, and remained confused. I said to them, " Did I seem to you like this hare ? by the life of Him who created us, in what instant you show me a gun's mouth, I will lay dead your hare's carcases upon this earth : put out the match ! " he did so. The cool of the evening approached ; we marched on slowly in silence, and doubtless they rolled it in their hollow hearts what might signify that vehement word of DESPERATE THOUGHTS the N.isrfmy. " Look, I s;iid t.o lln-rn, rizellcyn ! you two vile dastards, 1 tell you j)l,'iinly, that in what, mon anl OH drive me to an e.\t ivniity ye are but dead dogs; and I will take carrion thelul ! " My adventure in such too unhappy 0886 had been \ desperate; nigher tlian the Syrian borders I saw no certain relief. Syria wen- a .irn-at mark to shoot at, and terribly far off; and yet upun :> good 1 helfil, fresh watered — for extremities make men bnld, and the ofien escaping from < -I bad not despaired to come forth ; and one watering in the midway, — if I might once find water, had saved both thelfd and rider. — Or should 1 ride towards Tey ma ; two hundred miles from hence ? — But seeing the great Landmarks from this sid<-5 how might I know them again !— and it' 1 found any Aarab westward, yet these would be IVishr, the men's tribesmen. Should I ride eastward in unknown diras? or hold over the fearful Nel'ud sand billows to seek the Sherarat? Whithersoever I rode I was likely to faint before I came to any human relief ; and might not str, Aarab sooner kill the stranger, seeing one arrive thus, than receive me ? My eyes were dim with the suffered ophthalmia, and not knowing where to look for them, how in the vastness of the desert landscape should I descry any Aarab ? If I came by the mercy of God to any wells, I might drink drop by drop, by some artifice, but not water the thelul. Taking up stones I chafed ray blood-stained hands, hoping to wash them when we should come to the Aarab ; but this was the time of the spring pasture, when the great cattle are jezzin, and oft-times the nomads have no water by them, because there is leban to drink. Eyad thought the game turned against him ! when we came to a menzil, I might complain of them and he would have a scorn. — " Watch, said he, and when any camel stales, run thou and rinse the hands ; for wellah seeing blood on thy hands, there will none of the Aarab eat with thee." — The uriue of camels has been sometimes even drunk by town cara- vaners in their impatience of thirst. I knew certain of the Medanite tradesmen to the Sherarat, who coming up at mid- summer from the W Sirhan, and finding the pool dry (above Maan) where they looked to have watered, filled their bowl thus, and let in a little blood from the camel's ear. I have told the tale to some Beduins ; who answered me, '* But to drink this could not help a man, wellah he would die the sooner, it must so wring his bowels." It was evening, and now we went again by el-Agella. When the sun was setting, we saw another camel trocp not far off. 110 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA The herdsmen trotting round upon some of their, lighter beasts were driving-in the great cattle to a sheltered place between two hills ; for this night closed starless over our heads with falling weather. When we came to them the young men had halted their camels and were hissing to them to kneel, — ikh-kh-kh! The great brutes fall stiffly, with a sob, upon one or both their knees, and underdoubling the crooked hind legs, they sit pon- derously down upon their haunches. Then shuffling forward one and the other fore-knee, with a grating of the harsh gravel under their vast carcase-weight, they settle themselves, and with these pains are at rest : the fore bulk-weight is sustained upon the zora ; so they lie still and chaw their cud, till the morning sun. The camel leaves a strange (reptile-like) print (of his knees, of the zora and of the sharp hind quarters), which may be seen in the hard wilderness soil after even a year or two. The smell of the camel is musk;ish and a little dog-like, the hinder parts being crusted with urine ; yet is the camel more beautiful in our eyes than the gazelles, because man sees in this creature his whole welfare, in the khala. The good herding lads milked for us largely: we drunk deep and far into the night ; and of every sup' is made ere morning sweet blood, light flesh and stiff sinews. The rain beat on our backs as we sat about their watch -fire of sticks on the pure sand of the desert ; it lightened and thundered. When we were weary we went apart, where we had left our bags, and lay down in our cloaks, in the night wind and the rain. I lay so long musing of the morrow, that my companions might think me sleeping. They rested in the shelter of the next crag, where I heard them say — my quick hearing helping me in these dangers like the keen eyesight of the nomads — that later in the night they would lift their things on the thelul and be gone. I let them turn over to sleep : then I rose and went to the place where the fire had been. The herdsmen lay sleeping in the rain; and I thought I would tell the good lads my trouble. Their sister was herding with them, but in presence of strange menfolk she had sat all this evening obscurely in the rain, and far from the cheerful fire Now she was warming herself at the dying embers, and cast a little cry as she saw me coming, for all is fear in the desert. ' Peace ! I said to her, and I would speak with her brethren.' She took the elder by the shoulder, and rolling him, he wakened immediately, for/in this weather he was not well asleep. They all sat up, arid the young men, rubbing their faces asked, "Oh, what — ? and wherefore would not the stranger let them rest, and why was I not gone to sleep with NKJHT RAIN AND TKori'.LK 111 niy rafiks ? " Theso \\viv manly lad* but rudu ; they hrul not, -. Tin-ti that I was so much a stranger. I told them, that those \sith me were Anm-y.y, AgryhVs, who had money to carry me to Kheybar; but tlu-ir purpose was to I'm.-. -ike me, and perhaps tlu-y would abandon me this night." — " Look you (said they, holding their mouths for yawning, we are poor young serving men, and have not much understanding in such things ; but if we see them do thee a wrong, we will be for thee. now and lie down again, lest they miss thee ; and fear nothing, for we are nigh thee." About two hours before the day Eyad and Merjan rose, whispering, and they loaded the things on the couching thelul ; then with a little spurn they raised her silently. " Lead out (I heard Eyad whisper), and we will come again for the guns." I lay still, and when they were passed forth a few steps I rose to disappoint them : I went with their two matchlocks in my hands to the herdsmen's place, and awaked the lads. The treacherous raliks returning in the dark could not find their arms : then they came over where I sat now with the herdsmen. — "Ah! said they, Khalil had of them an unjust suspicion; they did but remove a little to find shelter, for where they lay the wind and rain annoyed them." Their filed tongues pre- vailed with the poor herding lads, whose careless stars were unused to these nice cases; and heartless in the rain, they consented with the stronger part, — that Khalil had misconstrued the others' simple meaning. "Well, take, they said, your matchlocks, and go sleep again, all of you ; and be content Khalil. And do ye give him no more occasion, said these upland judges : — and wellah we have not napped all this long night !ri I went forward with the Ageylies, when we saw the morning light ; Eyad rode. We had not gone a mile when he threatened to abandon me there in the khala ; he now threatened openly to shoot me, and raised his camel-stick to strike me ; but I laid hand on the thelul's bridle, and for such another word, I said, I would give him a fall. Merjan had no part in this violence ; he walked wide of us, for being of various humour, in the last hour he had fallen out with Eyad. [In their friendly discours- ing, the asseverations of these Bishr clansmen (in every clause) were in such sort ; — Merjdn: Wellah, yd ibn ammy, of a truth, my cousin ! Eydd : Ullah hadik, the Lord direct thee ! — Wa hydt rukbdtak, by the life of thy neck ! — Weysh aleyk, do as thou wilt, what hinders.] — "Well, Khalil, let be now, said Eyad, and I swear to thee a menzil of the Aarab is not far off, if the herding lads told us truly." 112 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA We marched an hour and found a troop of camels. Whilst their herdsmen milked for us, we met that Aly, who had enter- tained us before at Gussa ! he was here again abroad* to gather forage. He told us a wife of his lay sick with fever: "and have you not a remedy, Khalil, for the entha " (female) ? Eydd : "Khalil has kanakina, the best of medicines for the fever, I have seen it at Medina, and if a man but drink a little he is well anon : what is the cost, Khalil ? " — " A real." Aly : "I thought you would give it me, what is a little medicine, it costs thee nothing, and I will give thee fourpence ; did I not that day regale you with dates ? " Yet because the young wife was dear to him, Aly said he would go on to the Beduins' menzil, and take up a grown lamb for the payment. We came to a fertj of Shammar about nine in the morning. Eyad remembered some of those Aarab, and he was remembered by them : we heard also that -Braitshan's booths were now at half an hour's distance from hence upon our right hand. This Shammar host brought us to breakfast the best dates of the Jebel villages, clear as cornelians, with a bowl of his spring leban. Leaving there our baggage, without any mistrust (as amongst Aarab), we went over to Braitshan's ferij, — my rafiks hoping there to drink kahwa. A few locusts were flying and alighting in this herbage. Sitting with Braitshan in the afternoon, when Eyad had walked to another booth, and Merjan was with the thelul, I spoke to him of my treacherous companions, and to FerraJh, an honest old man whom we had found here before. " What is, I asked, your counsel ? and I have entered to-day under your roof." They answered each other gravely, " Seeing that Khalil has required of us the protection, we ought to maintain his right." But within a while they repented of their good dis- position, lest it should be said, that they had taken part with the Nasrany against a ' Mislim ' ; and they ended with these words, 'They could not go betwixt kliuidn (companions in the journey).' They said to Eyad, when he arrived, ' That since he had carried only my light bags, arid I was come down from Hayil upon my feet, and he had received five reals to convey me to Kheybar, and that in every place he threatened to abandon me ; let him render three reals, and leave me with the Aarab, and take the other two for his hire, and go his way.' Eyad answered, " If I am to blame, it is because of the feeble- ness of my thelul." — " Then, why, I exclaimed, didst thou take five reals to carry a passenger upon the mangy carrion ? " The Beduins laughed ; yet some said, I should not use so sharp A SHAMMAR II 113 words with my wa\ fellow, — "Khalil, i ab love the speaking." 1 knew tliis was true, and that, my plain right. would seem less in their shallow eyes than th 'smooth words, /.'</</: " Well, be it thus." "Thou hat heard hU promise, said they, return with k/nid/,; thy way-brother, and nil shall be well." — Kmply words of Arabs ! the sun Bel ; my rafiks depart I'd, and I soon followed them. Our Shammar host had killed the sacrifice of hospitality: his mutton was served in a irival trencher, upon temmn boiled in. the broth. But the m;m sat aloof, and took no part in our evening t;dk ; whether d; I to see a kafir mi'ler his tent- cloth, or Ixeaiise he misliked my Anne/y rat'iks. 1 told Aly he might have the kanakina, a gift, so he helped me to my right with Kyad : ' He would,' lie answered. — I wondered to see him ttDCD at 1 in the b^ths of the Aarab ! )>ut his parents were Mt-duw, :ind Aly left an orphan at Gusssi, had been bred up there. He bought of them on credit a good yearling ram to give me : they call it here tullyy and the ewe lamb ri'tkhnl. Aly brought me his tnlly on the morrow, when we were ready to depart; and said, " See, 0 Khalil, my present ! " — " I looked for the fulfilment of your last night's words; and, since you make them void, I ought not to help him in a little thing, who recks not though I perish ! " The fellow, who weighed not my grief, held himself scorned by the Nasrany: my bags were laid upon the theliil, and he gazed after us and murmured. The dewless aurora was rising from those waste hills, without the voice of any living creature in a weary wilderness ; and I fol- lowed forth the riders, Eyad and Merjan. The gravel stones were sharp ; the soil in the sun soon glowed as an hearth under my bare feet; the naked pistol (hidden under my tunic) hanged heavily upon my panting chest ; the air was breathless, and we had nothing to drink. It was hard for me to follow on foot, notwithstanding the weak pace of their thelul : a little spurn of a rider's heel and she had trotted out of my seeing ! Hard is this human patience ! showing myself armed, I might compel them to deliver the dromedary ; but who would not afterward be afraid to become my rafik ? If I provoked them, they (supposing me unarmed), might come upon me with their weapons ; and must I then take their poor lives ? — but were that just ? — in this faintness of body and spirit I could not tell ; I thought that a man should forsake life rather than justice, and pollute his soul with outrage. I went training and bearing on my camel-stick, — a new fatigue — to leave a furrow in the hard "gravel soil ; lest if those vile VOL. n. H 114 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA spirited rafiks rode finally out of my sight, I should be lost in the khala. I thought that I might come again, upon this trace, to Braitshan's booths, and the Aarab I saw the sun mount to high noon ; and hoped from every new brow to descry pasturing camels, or some menzil of the Nomads. An hour further I saw camels that went up slowly through a hollow ground to the watering. There I came up to my rafiks : they had stayed to speak with the herdsmen, who asked of the desert behind us. The Nomads living in the open wilderness are greedy of tidings ; and if herdsmen see passengers go by peaceably in the desert they will run and cry after them, * What news, ho ! — Tell us of the soil, that ye have passed through ? — Which Aarab be there ? — Where lodge they now ? — Of which waters drink they ? — And, the face of them is whitherward ? — Which herbs have ye seen ? and what is the soil betwixt them and us? found ye any bald places (mabal)? — With whom lodged ye last night ? — heard ye there any new thing, or as ye came by the way ? " Commonly the desert man delivers him- self after this sort with a loud suddenness of tongue, as he is heated with running ; and then only (when he is nigher hand) will he say more softly, 'Peace be with thee.' — The passengers are sure to receive him mildly ; and they condescend to all his asking, with WellaTi Ful&n ! l Indeed thou Such-an-one.' And at every meeting with herdmen, they say over, with a set face, the same things, in the same words, ending with the formal wa ent s6limt * and thou being in peace.' — The tribesman hardly bids the strangers farewell, when he has turned the back ; or he stands off, erect and indifferent, and lets pass the tarkieh. I stayed now my hand upon the thelul ; and from the next high grounds we saw a green plain before us. Our thirst was great, and Eyad showed with his finger certain crags which lay beyond ; ' We should find pools in them, he said (after the late showers) : but I marked in the ground [better than the inept Beduin rafiks] that no rain had fallen here in these days. We found only red pond- water, — so foul that the thirsting thelul refused to drink. I saw there the forsaken site of a winter encampment : the signs are shallow trenching, and great stones laid about the old steads of their beyts. Now we espied camels, which had been hidden by the hollow soil, and then a worsted village ! My rafiks considered the low building of those tents, and said, " They must be of Harb ! " As we approached they exclaimed, " But see how their beyts be stretched nigh together ! they are certainly Heteym." We met with an herdsman of theirs driving his camels to water, and hailed him — "Peace ! and ho ! what Aarab be those A TTETEYM BffGAMflOliT 115 , " I (am :IM) Ilarby dwelling with this IVrij, and they in to doubt ! f<>r wn> they of ! (enemies of the Dmvla at, Kheybar), he thought he wer danger Yet, now 1 hey could n<.: ; it' he turned from them, his mamry them] nii-.-hf. be rjuiekly overtaken. Tl«- Ageylies rode on therefore, wiih ihe formal Countenance that arrive at a nomad im-n/il. The loud dogs of unp- inent leapt out against us with hideous aiVray ; and as we <• marching by the beyts, the men and the haivem who sat within, onlv moving their eyes, silently regarded us passing itrao We halted In-fore the greater booth in the row, which was of ten or twelve tents. I'lyad and Meijan alighted, set down the parks and tied up the knee of the thelul. Th^n we walked together, with the solemnity of guests, to the open half of the tent, which is the men's apartment; here at the right hand looking forth: it is not always on the same side among the people of the desert. We entered, and this was the sheykh's beyt. Five or six men were sitting within on the sand, with an earnest demeanour (and that was because some of them knew me) ! They rose to receive us, looking silently upon me, as if they would say, "Art not thou that Nasrany ? " The nomad guest — far from his own — enters the strange beyt of hospitality, with demure looks; in which should appear some gentle token of his own manly worth. We sat down in the booth, but these uncivil hosts — Heteymies — kept their uneasy silence. They made it strange with us ; and my rafiks beat their camel-sticks upon the sand and looked down : the Heteymies gazed side-long and lowering upon us. At length, despising their mumming, and inwardly burning with thirst, I said to the sly fellow who sat beside me, a comely ill-blooded Heteymy and the host's brother, " Edctony md, give me a little water to drink." He rose unwillingly ; and fetched a bowl of foul clay-water When I only sipped this unwholesome bever : " Rueyht (he said maliciously), hast allayed thy thirst ? " My companions asked for the water, and the bowl was sent round. "Drink! said the Heteymies, for there is water enough." At length there was set before us a bowl of mereesy shards and a little leban : then first they broke their unlucky silence. " I think we should know thee (quoth he of the puddle water) ; art not thou the Nasrany that came to Kasim's from Ibn Rashid ? " They had alighted yesterday : they call the ground Aul, of those crags with water. The (granitic) landscape is named Ghrdlfa; and Sfd, of a plutonic mountain, which appeared 116 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA eastward over the plain seven miles distant; and they must send thither to fetch their water. The altitude was here 4600 feet. The flocks were driven in at the going down of the sun ; and bye and bye we saw Maatuk — that was our host's name — struggling to master a young ram. Eyad sent Merjan with the words of course, " Go and withhold him." Merjan made as though he would help the ram, saying, with the Arabs' smooth (effeminate) dissimulation, ' It should not be, nay by Ullah, we would never suffer it.' " Oho ! young man, let me alone, answered the Heteymy, may I not do as I please with mine own ? " and he drew his slaughter-sheep to the woman's side. — Two hours later Maatuk bore in the boiled ram brittled, upon a vast trencher of temmn. He staggered under the load and caught his breath, for the hospitable man was asthmatic. Eyad said when we were sitting alone, " Khalil we leave thee here, and el-Kasim lies behind yonder mountains ; these are good folk, and they will send thee thither." — " But how may ye, having no water-skin, pass over to the Auajy ? " — " Well, we will put in to Thurghrnd for a girby." — " Ullah re- member your treachery, the Aarab will blame you who abandon your rafik, also the Pasha will punish you ; and as you have robbed me of those few reals he may confiscate some of your arrears." — " Oh say not so, Khalil ! in this do not afflict me ; and at our departure complain not : let not the hosts hear your words, or they will not bring you forward upon your journey." When the rest were sleeping I saw Maatuk go forth ; — I thought this host must be good, although an Heteymy. I went to him and said I would speak with him. — " Shall we sit down here then, and say on," — for the Arabs think they may the better take counsel in their weak heads when sitting easily upon the beled. I told him how the rafiks had made me journey hitherto on my feet (an hundred miles) from Hayil ; how often they had threatened in the midst of the khala to forsake me, and even to kill me : should I march any longer with them ? — no ! I was to-day a guest in his tent ; I asked him to judge between us, and after that to send me safely to el-Kasim. — " All this will I do ; though I cannot myself send thee to el-Kasim, but to some Harb whose tents are not far from us, eastward ; and we may find there someone to carry thee thither. Now, when the morning ia light and you see these fellows ready to set forward, then say to me, dakhttak, and we shall be for thee, and if they resist we will detain their thelul." — " Give thy hand, and swear to me." — " Ay, I swear, said he, wullah, wullah ! " but he drew back his hand * for how should they keep touch with a Nasrany ! — But in the r\KTI\:; WITH THE FALSE RAFlK 117 ni^lit time, whilst I slept, my companions also held their council with .Maatuk: and that, was as between men of the same n-li^ion, and Maatuk betrayed me for his pipeful of sweet hameyd;. When it was day those lafiks laid my bags upon the theli'd, and I saw K\ ad give to Maatuk a little golden hameydy, for which the Heteymy thanked him benignly. Then, tating up their mantles and matchlocks, they raised the thelul with a spurn : Mrrjan having the bridle in his hand led forth, with nwflini (i/i-i/lc. As they made the first steps, I said to Maatuk, " My host detain them, and «n« <1<ik1iil-ak! — do justly." — " Ugh ! go with them, answered Maatuk (making it strange), what justice wouldst thou have, Nasrany ? " — "Where be thy last niirht 's promises ? Is there no keeping faith, Heteymy ? listen ! 1 will not go with them." But I saw that my contention would be vain ; for there was some intelligence between them. When Kyad and Merjan were almost out of sight, the men in the tent cried to me, "Hasten after them and your bags, or they will bo quite gone." — " I am your dakhil, and you are for- sworn ; but I will remain here." — "No ! " — and now they began to thrust me (they were Heteym). Maatuk caught up a tent- stake, and came on against me ; his brother, the sly villain, ran upon me from the backward with a cutlass. " Ha ! exclaimed Maatuk, I shall beat out his brains."—" Kill him— kill him ! " cried other frenetic voices (they were young men of Harb and Annezy dwelling in this ferlj). "Let me alone, cries his brother, and I will chop off the head of a cursed Nasrany." "I cannot, I said to them, contend with so many, though ye be but dastards ; put down your weapons. And pray good woman ! [to Maatuk's wife who looked to me womanly over her curtain, and upbraided their violence] pour me out a little lebaii ; and let me go from this cursed place." — " Ah ! what wrong, she said to them, ye do to chase away the stranger! it is harram, and, Maatuk, he is thy dakhil :" she hastened to pour ine out to drink. " Drink ! said she, and handed over the bowl, drink ! and may it do thee good ; " and in this she murmured a sweet proverb of their dira, widd d-ghrarfb ahlhu, " the desire of the stranger is to his own people; speed the stranger home." "Up, I said, Maatuk, and come with me to call the Agey- lies back, my strength is lost, and alone I cannot overtake them." — "I come, and wellah will do thee right with them." — When we had gone hastily a mile, I said : " I can follow no further, and must sit down here ; go and call them if you will." Great is their natural humanity : this Heteymy, who was himself infirm, bade me rest ; and he limped as fast as he might go and shouted after them, — he beckoned to my late rafiks ! and they 118 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA tardily returned to us. " Maatuk, I said, this is the end of my journey to-day : Eyad shall give me here Aneybar's schedule of safe conduct, and he shall restore me three reals ; also, none of you chop words with me, for I am a weary man, whom ye have driven to extremities." — Maatuk (to Eyad): "What say you to this ? it seems your raiik is too weary to go any more, will ye carry him then on the thelul ? " — " We will not carry him ; we can only sometimes ride upon her ourselves ; yet I will carry him— it is but half a day — to Thurghrud, and leave him there ! " This I rejected. Maatuk : " Well, he shall stay with us ; and I will send Khalil forward to the Harb with Jbn Ndhal, for his money. Now then I say restore his money, let it be two reals, and the paper from Ibn Rashid, — what, man ! it is his own." — Eydd : " I am willing to give up the paper to Khalil, so he write me a discharge, which may acquit me before the Pasha ; but I will not restore a real of the silver, I have spent it, — what, man ! wouldst thou have my clothes ? " — Maatuk : " We shall not let thee depart so ! give Khalil one real, and lay down the schedule." — Eydd: "Well, I accept": he took out a crown, and "This is all I have left, said he ; let Khalil give me fourpence, for this is fourpence more than the mejidie." — "You may think yourselves well escaped for fourpence, which is mine own : take that silver, Maatuk, arrabun (earnest-money) of the three reals for conveying me as thou said'st to the Harb." He received it, but the distrustful wretch made me give him immediately the other two. I recovered thus Aneybar's safe-conduct, and that was much for my safety in the wild country. Eyad insisted for his written discharge, and I wrote, " Eyad, the Ageyly, of Bejaida, Bishr, bound for five reals by Abdullah Siruan, lieutenant at Kheybar, to con- vey me to Hayil, and engaged there by Aneybar, Ibn Rashid's deputy, for which he received other five, to cany me again to Kheybar, here treacherously abandons me at Aul, under Sfa, in the Sham mar dira." The Ageylies took the seal from my hand, and set it to themselves twenty times, to make this instru- ment more sure : then Maatuk made them turn back to the menzil with my baggage. So Eyad and Merjan departed; yet not without some men's crying out upon them from the tents, for their untruth to the rafik. These Heteymies were heavy-hearted fanatics, without the urbanity of Beduins : and Maatuk had sold me for a little to- bacco. For an hour or two he embalmed his brain with the reeking drug; after that he said, " Khalil, dakhil-a/e, hast thou not, I beseech thee, a little dokhan ? ah ! say not that thou hast IBN N.UTAL 110 none; L'ive mo but a litt le, ;md I will n-,-,fore 1 »S6 three iTv thee on my thelul to Ilni I ,o no (lokli/iM, tln'i;-!i you rill, of!' my lu-ad." — " I\ g;illiun < I 1 v,i!l forgive ''. .-jill!" — Had I bought a li!tl«- : at Ilayil, 1 h'.d SJMM! well. One Aniir/.y and three Jlarb beyts were in tin's ILeteymy ferij. Some of thos-- ine in the afternoon, what tribesmen were the rafiks that, hud i'nr-aken me. I answered, " Ai;;ijv and ISrpujy of Bishr." — "JIadsfc thou said this before to us, they had not parted so! we had seized their thelul, for Ihev aiv //«:///, :md wo have not eaten with them." Said one: " \\ ''hiist i!uy 1 !!<ed I thought the speech of the younger sounded thus, ay billah it was 15ejaijy." — "You might overtake a."— "Which way went they'? "— " To Baitha Nethfl, and tftiii thence they will cross to the Auajy." Eyful had this charge, from K hey bar to fetch the Siruan's and the Bishy's thelfils. [Although those Beduw were enemies of the Dowla, the A gey I dromedaries had been privately put out to pasture among them.] In that quarter of the wilderness was sprung (this year) a plentiful rabia, after the autumnal rains, " so that the camels might lie down with their fills at noonday." — "How now ? (said one to another) wilt thou be my rafik if the 'bil come home this evening ? shall we take our theluls and ride after them : they will journey slowly with their mangy beast; if the Lord will we may overtake them, and cut their throats." — " Look (I said) I have told you their path, go and take the thelul if you be able, but you shall not do them any hurt." I was in thought of their riding till the nightfall : but the camels came not. Of Ibn Nahal's Aarab they had no late tidings. They spoke much in my hearing of Ibn Nahal ; and said the hareem — that • the best hearted in this encampment, "His tent is large, so large ! and he is rich, so rich, — ouf ! all there is liberality : and when thou comest to his tent say, ' Send me, 0 Ibn Nahal, to el-Kasim', and he will send thee." Maatnk and his evil-eyed brother were comely ; and their :- — she dwelt in Maatuk's beyt — was one of the goodliest works of nature ; only (such are commonly the Heteyman) not well coloured. She went freshly clad ; and her beauty could not be hid by the lurid face-clout : yet in these her flowering years of womanhood she remained unwedded ! The thin-witted young Annezy man of the North, who sat all day in the sheykh's beyt, fetched a long breath as oft as she appeared — as it were a dream of their religion — in our sight ; and plucking my mantle he would say, " Sawest thou the like ere now ! " This sheykhess. 120 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA when she heard their wonted oks ! and ahs ! cast upon them her flagrant great eyes, and smiled, without any disdain. — She, being in stature as a goddess, yet would there no Beduwy match with her (an Heteymia) in the way of honourable marriage ! But dissolute Beduins will mingle their blood out of wedlock with the beautiful Heteymias ; and I have heard the comely ribald Eyad mock on thus, making his voice small like a woman's, — " Then will she come and say humbly to the man, 'Marry me, for I am with child, and shield me from the blame."3 There was an Heteymy in this menzil who returned after an absence : I enquired, * Where had he been in the meanwhile ?' — "'Wellah, at el-Hayat : it is but one long day upon the thelul, and I have wedded there a (black) wife." — " Wherefore thus ? " — "Wellah I wished for her." — "And what was the bride money?" — "I have spent 'nothing." — "Or gave she thee any- thing ? " — " Ay billah ! some palms." — " She has paid for thee ! " " Well, why not ? "— " Will not thy children be black like slaves, dbid? " — " She is blackish-red, her children will be reddish." — "And what hast thou to do with village wives ? " — " Eigh ! I shall visit her now and then ; and when I come there go home to mine own house : " — and cries the half-witted nomad, "Read, Khalil, if this thing which I have done be lawful or unlawful ? " [The negro village el-Hayat is in the S.-E. borders of the (Kheybar) Harra ; and a journey from thence toward Medina is the palm hamlet Howeyat. The (Annezy) Beduin landlords in both settlements were finally ex- pulsed by Abeyd Ibn Rashid ; because not conforming them- selves to the will of the Emir, they had received their Ateyba neighbours — who were his enemies — as their daJcMls, and would have protected them against him.] The camels were azab, Maatuk's thelul was with them ; and till their coming home we could not set out for Ibn Nahal. Some Solubba rode-in one morrow on their asses; and our people gave them pots and kettles (which are always of brass), to carry away, for tinning. I found two young Solubbies gelding an ass behind the tents ! — (the Aarab have only entire horses). The gipsies said laughing, * This beast was an ass overmuch, and they had made him chaste ! ' I found an old Solubby sitting in Maatuk's tent, a sturdy greybeard ; his grim little eyes were fastened upon me. I said to him, " What wouldst thou ? " — " I was thinking, that if I met with thee alone in the khala, I would kill thee."— "Wherefore, old tinker?"— " For thy clothing and for any small things that might be with thee, Nasrany ; — if the wolf found thee in the wilderness, wert Tin; BTRANQBB IIOMK" 121 thou not afr;iid?" -The Solubl.a ofl'.-nd no m;ui, and none do tin-in hurt. I enquired of these; " l> it tru--, that ye <-at the sheep or camel which is dead of itself ? "— " \Ve eat it, and how else might we that have no cattle cat meat, in the n \ the Aaral.! \\Vllah, Khalil, is this halal or harmm ?" A day or two alter Maaluk was for no nmn- ^"in.u' 1o Hm N;ihal ; he said, "Shall I carry t her. to el-Ilayat ? OfelM I might leave thee at Seniira or at Selrynia." l>ut 1 answ.-ivd, Jbn NYdial ;" and his good wife Noweyr, poor woman, looking over her tent cloth, spoke for me every day ; " Oh ! said she, ye are not good, and Maatuk, Maatuk! why hinder Khalil ? per- form thy promise, and wif/tl cl-<jh r<i rib faledhlt <«iti cl-<'ijn<tl>i/ : (it is a refrain of the Nomad maidens 'speed the stranger on his way to his own people ' ; or be it, * the heart of the stranger is in his own countiy, and not in a strange land'.") The good hareem her neighbour! answered with that pious word of iana- tical Arabia, ' We have a religion, and they have a religion ; every man is justified in his own religion.' Noweyr was one of those good women that bring the blessing to an household. (Sometimes I saw her clay-pale face in their tent, without the veil : though not in prosperous health, she was daily absent in the khala, from the forenoon till the rn id -afternoon ; and when I asked her wherefore she wearied herself thus ? she said, and sighed, " I must fetch water from the Sfii to-day, and to-morrow visit the camels ; and else Maatuk beats me." Maatuk's hospi- tality was more than any Beduwy had showed me : Noweyr gave me to drink of her leban ; and he bade me reach up rny hand when I was hungry to take of her new inereesy shards, which were spread to dry in the sun upon their worsted roof. If the camels came home he milked a great bowlful for the stranger, saying, it was his sadaka, or meritorious human kindness, for God's sake. In these evenings, I have seen the sporting goats skip and stand, often two and three together, upon the camels' steep chines : and the great beasts, that lay chawing the end in the open moonlight, took no more heed of them than cattle in our fields, when crows or starlings light upon them. Maatuk was afraid to further me, because of Ibn Rashid : and they told me a strange tale. A year or two ago, these Heteym carried on their camels some strangers, whom they called " Nasara " ! — I know not whither. The Emir hearing of it, could hardly be entreated not to punish them cruelly, and take their cattle. — " Ay, this is true, 0 Khalil ! " added Noweyr. — "But what Nasranies! and from whence?" — " Wellah, they could not tell, the strangers were Nasara, as they heard." The Arabs are barren-minded in the emptiness of the desert life, and 122 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA retchless of all that pertains not to their living.' " Nasara," might signify in their mouths no more than " aliens not of the orthodox belief." Maatuk: " Ibn Rashid is not thy friend, and the country is dangerous ; abide with me, Khalil, till the Haj come and return again, next spring." — " How might I live those many months? is there food in the khala ? " — " You may keep my camels." — "But how under the flaming sun, in the long summer season ? " — " When it is hot thou canst sit in my booth, and drink leban ; and I will give thee a wife " — Hearing his words, I rejoiced, that the Aarab no longer looked upon me as some rich stranger amongst them ! When he pronounced * wife/ the worthy man caught his breath ! — could he offer a bint of Heteym to so white a man? so he said further, "I will give thee an HarMa." 11 Years ago, quoth Maatuk, there came into our parts a Moghreby [like Khalil], — wellah we told little by him ; but the man bought and sold, and within a while we saw him thriving. He lived with Harb, and took a wife of their daughters ; and the Moor had flocks and camels, all gotten at the first and increased of his traffic in samn and clothing. Now he is dead, his sons dwell with Harb, and they are well-faring." We sat in the tent, and they questioned me, ' Where is thy nation ? ' I shewed them the setting sun, and said we might sail thither in our shipping, sefn. — " Shipping (they said one to another) is zym&t ; but 0 Khalil, it is there, in the West, we have heard to be the Kafir Nation ! and that from thence the great danger shall come upon el-Islam: beyond how many floods dwell ye, we heard seven ; and how many thelul journeys- be ye behind the Sooltan ? " — Coffee-drinking, though the Heteyman be welfaring more than the neighbour Beduins, is hardly seen, even in sheykhs' tents, amongst them : there was none in Maatuk's ferij Aarab of Ibn Rashid, their only enemies are the Ateyba ; and pointing to the eastward, " All the peril, said Maatuk, is from thence ! " — These Heteym (unlike their kindred inhabiting nearer Medina) are never cheesemakers.. He is a free man that may carry all his worldly possession upon one of his shoulders : now I secretly cast away the super- fluous weight of my books, ere a final effort to pass out of Arabia, and (saving Die alte Geograpliie Arabiens, and Zehme's Arabien seit hunderi Jahren) gave them honourable burial in a thob's hole ; heaped in sand, and laid thereon a great stone. — In this or another generation, some wallowing camel or the streaming winter rain may discover to them that dark work of the Nasrany. Six days the Nomad tents v> ere standing at Aul, to-morrow they RKT OFT TO HM) NIX N \H \L would dislodge ; and Man I nk no\\ •< , the stranger to Ilni N:ili;il : tor \..W\T, lifting li«-r j.-.lo face above WOman'fl iMirtain, nmny 1 hues daily e\ iiorfed !ii: Maatuk ! detain not Khalil against his liking ; stranger home.*1 Their raiin-ls were come; and when Ihe morning broke, 'Art Mum ready, quoth J\Iaatuk, and I will hring the t&4 lul : but, in faith 1 kno\v not where llm NYihal tnay bo found." Noweyr put, a small skin of sanin in her husband's wallet; to be, she said, for the stranger. We mounted, Maatuk's sly bn brought us on our journey ; and hissed his last counsels in my raiik's ear, winch were not certainly to the advantage of the :— -"Aye! aye ! " quoth Mr-at.uk. We rode on a h in r, or dromedary male (little used in these countries), and which is somewhat rougher riding. By this the sun was an hour high ; and we held over the desert toward the Sfa, mountain. A two hours we saw another menzil of Heteyin, sheykh Iln ])<i,irnt ilk, and their camels pasturing in the plain. Maatuk called the herdsman to us to tell and take the news; but they had he;ird nothing lately of Ibn Nahal. The waste beyond was nearly mithal: we rode by some granite blocks, disposed bay wise, and the head laid south-east- ward, as it were towards Mecca : it might be taken in these days for a praying place. But Maatuk answered, " Such works are of the ancients in these diras, — the B. Taamir." We saw a very great thob's burrow, and my rafik alighted to know if the edible monster were ' at home : ' and in that, singing cheerfully, he startled a troop of gazelles. Maatuk shrilled through his teeth, and the beautiful deer bounded easily before us ; then he yelled like a wild man, and they bent themselves to their utmost flight. The scudding gazelles stood still anon, in the hard desert plain of gravel, and gazed back like timid damsels, to know what had made them afraid. — In Syria, I have seen mares, " that had out- stripped gazelles"; but whether this were spoken in the ordinary figure of their Oriental speech, which we call a falsehood, 1 have not ascertained. The nomads take the fawns with their grey- hounds, which are so swift, that I have seen them overrun the small desert hare almost in a moment. I asked Maatuk, Where was his matchlock ? — He lost it, he answered, to a ghrazzu of Ateyba — that was a year ago ; and now he rode but with that short cutlass, wherewith his brother had once threatened the Nasrany. He sang in their braying-wise [which one of their ancient poets, Antara, compared to the hum of flies !J as we passed over the desert at a trot, and quavering his voice (i-i-14) to the wooden jolting of the thelul saddle. Maatuk 124 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA told me, (with a sheykh's pride), that those Beduin households in his f erij had been with him several years. In the midsummer time all the ferjan of the Ibn Barrak Heteym (under the sheykh Kasim,) assemble and pitch together, near the Wady er-Rummah, " where, said he, one may find water, under the sand, at the depth of this camel stick." — Wide we Lave seen to be the dispersion of the Heteym : there are some of the B. Rashid far in the North, near Kuweyt ! Now before us appeared a steep granite mountain, Genna ; and far upon our left hand lay the watering JBenana, between mountains. We came after mid-day to a great troop of Heteym camels : but here was the worst grazing ground (saviag the Sinai country) that I ever beheld in the wilderness; for there was nothing sprung besides a little wormwood. The herd boys milked their nagas for us ; but that milk with the froth was like wormwood for bitterness [and such is the goats' milk in this pasture]. The weleds enquired in their headlong manner, " El- Jchdbar ? weysh el-elltim ? What tidings from your parts, what news is there?" — "Well, it may please Ullah." — "And such and such Aarab, beyond and beside you, where be they now ? where is such a sheykh encamped, and of what waters drink they ? is there word of any ghrazzus ? And the country which you have passed through ? — say is it bare and empty, or^Buch that it may satisfy the cattle ? Which herbs saw ye in it, O Maatuk ? What is beard of the Emir ? and where left ye your households ? — auh ! and the ferjan and Aarab thou hast men- tioned, what is reported of their pasture ?" — Maatuk: "And what tidings have ye for us, which Aarab are behind you ? what is heard of any ghrazzus ? Where is Ibn Nahal ? where be your booths ? " An hour or two later we found another herd of Heteym camels : and only two children kept them ! Maatuk made a gesture, stroking down his beard, when we rode from them ; and said, " Thus we might have taken wellah every head of them, had they been our enemies' cattle ! " Yet all this country lies very open to the inroads of Ateyba, who are beyond the W. er-Rummah. Not much later we came to a menzil of Heteym, and alighted for that day. — These tent-dwellers knew me, and said to Maatuk, ' I had journeyed with a tribesman of theirs, Ghroceyb, my name was Khalil ; and Kasim's Aarab purchased medicines of me, which they found to be such as I had foretold them ; I was one that deceived not the Aarab.' As for Ibn Nahal, they heard he was gone over "The Wady/' into the Ateyba border, (forsaken by them of late years for dread of Ibn Rashid). The land height was here 4200 feet, shelving to the W. er-Rummah. MKKT WITH TI1K ir.\mi. NBAB MY 125 At daybreak we mounted, and carae after an hour's ridin other Ileteym tents. All the wilderness was barren, almost mahal, and yet, full of the nomads' worsted hamlets at this in. Maatnk found a half-brother in this menzil, with their old mother ; and we alighted to sit awhile with them. Tin- man brought fresh goat milk and bade me drink, — making- much of it, because his hospil alii y was whole milk ; ' The sanm, he said, had not been taken.' Batter is t he poor nomads' money, where- with they may buy themselves clothing and town wares; th- fore they use to pour out only buttermilk to the guest. — We rode further; the (granite) desert was now sand soil, in which after winter rain there springs the best wild pasture, and we began to find good herbage. We espied a camel troop feeding under the mountain Genna, and crossed to them to enquire the herdsmen's tidings ; but Maatnk, who was timid, presently drew bridle, not certainly knowing what they were. " Yonder, I said, be only black camels, they are Harb ; " [the great cattle of the south and middle tribes, Harb, Meteyr, Ateyban, are commonly swarthy or black, and none of them dun-coloured]. Maatnk answered, it was God's truth, and wondered from whence had I this lore of the desert. We rode thither and found them to be Harb indeed. The young men told us that Ibn Nahal had alighted by Seleymy to-day ; and they milked for us. We rode from them, and saw the heads of the palms of the desert village, and passed by a trap mountain, Chebtid. Before us, over a sandy descending plain, appeared a flat mountain Debby ; and far off behind Debby I saw the blue coast of some wide mountain, el-Alem. " Thereby, said Maatuk, lies the way to Medina, — four days' thelul riding." We went on in the hot noon ; and saw another camel troop go feeding under the jebel ; we rode to them and alighted to drink more milk and enquire the herdsmen's tidings. They were Harb also, and shewed us a rocky passage in the mountain to go over to Ibn N£hal. But I heard of them an adverse tiding: 'The B. Aly (that is all the Harb N. and E. from hence) were drawing south- wards, and the country was left empty, before a ghrazzu of Ibn Saud and the Ateyba ! ' — How now might I pass forward to el- Kasim ? We saw a multitude of black booths pitched under Debby; * They were Attf\ answered the herdsmen, — come up hither from the perpetual desolation of their Hejaz marches, be- tween the Harameyn ; for they heard that the rabia was in these parts. — El-Attf ! that is, we have seen, a name abhorred even among their brethren; for of Auf are the purse-cutters and pillers of the poor pilgrims. And here, then, according to a dis- tich of the western tribes, I was come to the ends of the (known) world ! for says one of their thousand rhymed saws, ' El-Adf 126 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA warrahum ma ft shuf, nothing is seen beyond Auf:' I beheld indeed a desert world of new and dreadful aspect ! black camels, and uncouth hostile mountains ; and a vast sand wilderness shelving towards the dire imposter's city ! Genna is a landmark of the Beduin herdsmen ; in the head are pools of rain-water. Descending in the steep passage, we encountered a gaunt desert man riding upward on a tall theliil and leading a mare : he bore upon his shoulder the wavering horseman's shelf a. Maatuk shrank timidly m the saddle ; that witch-like armed man was a startling figure, and might be an Aufy. Eoughly he challenged us, and the rocks resounded the magnanimous utterance of his leathern gullet : he seemed a manly soul who had fasted out his life in that place of torment which is the Hejaz between the Harameyn, so that nothing re- mained of him but the terrific voice ! — wonderfully stern and beetle-browed was his dark visage. He espied a booty in my bags ; and he beheld a stranger. " Tell me, he cries, what men be ye ? " — Maatuk made answer meekly, " Heteymy I, and thou ? " — " I Harby, and ugh ! cries the perilous anatomy, who he with thee ? " — " A Shainy trading among the Aarab." — "Aye well, and I see him to be a Sliamy, by the guise of his clothing," He drew his mare to him, and in that I laid hand to the pistol in my bosom, lest this Death-on-a-horse should have lifted his long spear against us. Maatuk reined aside ; but the Harby struck his dromedary, and passed forth. We looked down from the mountain over a valley-like plain, and saw booths of the Aarab, V Khalil, quoth Maatuk, the people is ignorant, I shall not say to any of them, ' He is a Nasrany ' ; and say it not thyself. Wellah I may not go with thee to Ibn Nahal's beyt, but will bring thee to Aarab that are pitched by him." — " You shall carry me to Ibn Nahal himself. Are not these tribesmen very strait in religion ? I would not light at another tent ; and thou wilt not abandon thy rafik." — " But Khalil there is an old controversy betwixt us for camels ; and if I went thither he might seize this thelul." — " I know well thou speakest falsely." — " Nay, by Him who created this camel-stick ! " — But the nomad was forsworn ! The Nejumies had said to me at Kheybar, " It is well that Khalil never met with Harb ; they would certainly have cut his throat : " — they spoke of Harb tribesmen between the sacred cities, wretches black as slaves, that have no better trade than to run behind the caravans clamouring, bakshish ! Here I came to upland Harb, and they are tributaries of Ibn Rash id; but such distinctions cannot be enquired out in a day from the ignorant. In the Nejd Harb I have found the HARP, WOl !-i:iM iniiitl, moiv 1 haii ii: . ! at Kh.-yl»;ir JTM a yOUl Mammons, of .111 M^cvt ical humour; he WM Seldom Abdullah's rufV-'t1 d n't d-. in ;_••-, and y«-f lie came IB Amm Mohammed, who was liis hal f'-l ri'uf-Mi'-n. : : kindred. One dav lie said boa-ting, "We tin- \ '• i are better than ye ; for we bavenothiog Kn-njy [of OUtla or wares fetched in by Turks and foreign pilgrims to the Holy Places], saving this tobacco." — No or four 1 tooths, whicli stood a pa it in th" \ :: I !•<;;- pl.iin ; he alight- < I re them, and said lie would leave me there. woman came ooi t-> us, \,;<Te we sat on the sand beside the yet unloaded tluMuI ; and tlu-n a youuir wilV IVom : ivxt u-. Very cleanly-gay s! 1, anion^.-t Aa.'aU in her new calico kirtle of l»lue broidcrcd \\itl; not this tlie bridt>, in IHT ma.' rniiiMit, of sonif !>•• Sitin's fortiiiiatt* youth ? She approached with tho ^-rruv of the d< and, \vliicli is seldom seen., with some dewy freshness in her checks, — it mi#ht be of an amiable modesty ; and she was a lovely luini.-i-i flower in that inhuman desolation. Sh'- with a yonng woman's ditlid^nce, 'What would we?' Maatuk responded to the daughter of liarb, " Salaam, and if ye have here any sick persons, this is an hakim from es-Sham ; one who travels about with his medicines among the Aarab, and is very well skilled , now he seeks who will convey him to el-Kusim. 1 leave this Simmy at your Ivyt, for I cannot myself carry him further ; and ye will send him forward." She called the elder woman to counsel; and they answered, * Look you! the men are in the klmla. and we are women alone. It were better that ye went over to Ibn Nahal ! — and see, that is his great booth standing yonder ! '— Maatuk : " I will leave him here ; and when they come home (at evening) your men can see to it." But I in ado him mount with me to ride to Ibn Nahal. We alighted at Ibn Nahal's great beyt : and entered with the solemnity and greeting of strangers. Ibn Nihal'i son and a few young men were sitting on the sand, in this wide hanging-room of worsted. We sat down nnd they whispered among them, that * I was some runaway soldier, of the Dowla' [from the Holy Cities or el-Yemen]: then I heard them whisper, 'Nay, I was that Nasrany ! ' — They would not question with us till we had drunk kahwa. A nomad woman of a grim stature stood upbraiding without Ibn Nahal's great booth ! she prophesied bitter words in the air, and no man regarded. Her burden was of the decay of hospi- tality now-a-days! and Ibn Nahal [a lean soul, under a sleek 128 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA skin], was gone over to another tent to be out of 'earshot of the wife-man's brawling. The Beduw commonly bear patiently the human anger, zaal, as it were trouble sent by the will of God upon them : the Aarab are light even in their ire, and there is little weight in their vehement words If any Nomad tribesman revile his sheykh, he as a nobleman, will but shrink the shoulders and go further off, or abide till others cry down the injurious mouth. But evil tongues, where the Arabs dwell in towns, cannot so walk at their large : the common railer against the sheukh in Hayil, or in Boreyda, would be beaten by the sergeants of the Emir. The coffee mortar rang out merrily for the guests in Ibn Nahal's booth : and now I saw the great man and his coffee companions approaching, with that (half feminine) wavering gait which is of their long clothing and unmuscular bodies. They were coffee lords, men of an elegant leisure in the desert life ; also the Harb go gallantly clad amongst Beduins. Khalaf ibn Nahal greeted us strangers with his easy smile, and the wary franchise of these mejlis politicians, and that ringing hollow throat of the dry desert ; he proffered a distant hand : we all sat down to drink his kahwa, — and that was not very good. Khalaf whispered to his son, " What is he, a soldier ? " The young man smiling awaited that some other should speak : so one of the young companions said, " We think we should know thee." The son : " Art not thou the Nasrany that came last year to Hayil ? " — " I am he." — " I was at Hayil shortly after, and heard of thee there ; and when you entered, by the tokens, I knew thee." Khalaf answered among them, unmoved, "He had visited the Nasara, that time he traded with camels to Egypt ; and they were men of a singular probity. Wellah, in his reckoning with one of them, the Christian having received too much by five- pence, rode half a day after him to make restitution ! " He added, " Khalil travels among the Aarab ! — well, I say, why not ? he carries about these medicines, and they (the Nasara) have good remedies. Abu Faris before him, visited the Aarab ; and wellah the princes at Hayil favoured this Khalil ? Only a thing mis- likes me, which I saw in the manners of the Nasara, — Khalil, it is not honest ! Why do the men and hareem sit so nigh, as it were in the knees of each other ? " Now there came in two young spokesmen of the Seleymy villagers, — although they seemed Beduw. They complained of the injury which Khalaf had done them to-day, sending his camels to graze in their reserve of pasture ; and threatened * that they would mount and ride to Hayil, to accuse him before the Emir ! ' Khalaf 's son called them out presently to eat in CAM. ANTS OF HAIM5 tin' inner apartment, made (snrh I !md imf Men i :i the midst of this very l"ng and dm'ii t'-iil : that hidden dish is not rightly of tin* Nrjd Aarab, hut savours of the town life and Medina. The young men answered in their displeasure, they were not hungry, they catno not hither to eat, and that they were here at home. K/idlaf: "But go in and eat, and afterward we will speak together?" They went unwillingly, and returned anon: and when ho saw them a^rain, Khalaf, because he did them wrong, began to scold : — " Do not they of Seleymv receive many benefits from us? buy we not dates of you and corn also? why are ye then ungrateful? — Ullah, curso the fathers of them, fathers of settatdsher kelb (sixteen dogs)." Another said : " Ullali, curse them, fathers of ethnasher Mb (twelve dogs) ; " forms more liberal perhaps than the " sixty doL,rs " of the vulgar malice. These were gallants of Ilarb, bearing about, in their Beduin garments, the savour of Medina. Khalaf said, with only a little remaining bitterness, that to satisfy them, he would remove on the morrow. Seleymy (So- leyma) is a small Shammar settlement of twelve households, their wells are very deep. When the young men were gone, Khalaf, taking again his elated countenance gave an ear to our business. He led out Maatuk and, threatening the timid Heteymy with the dis- pleasure of Ibn Rashid, enquired of him of my passing in the country, and of my coming to his menzil. I went to Khalaf, and said to them, "Thou canst send me, as all the people say, to el-Kasim : I alighted at your beyt, and have tasted of your hospitality, and would repose this day and to-morrow ; and then let some man of your trust accompany me, for his wages, to el- Kasim." His voice was smooth, but Khalat's dry heart was full of a politic dissimulation : " Mel uJcdar, I am not able ; and how, he answered, might we send thee to el-Kuslni ? — who would adventure thither ; the people of Aneyza are our enemies." — " Khalaf, no put-offs, you can help me if you will." — "Well, hearken ! become a Moslem, and I will send thee whithersoever thou would'st ; say, ' There is no God, beside Ullah,' and I will send thee to el-Kasim freely," — " You promise this, before witnesses ? " — " Am I a man to belie my words." — " Hear then all of you ; There is none God but Ullah ! — let the thelul be brought round." — "Ay ! say also Mohammed is the messenger of Ullah ! " — " That was not in our covenant ; the thelul Khalaf j and let me be going." — " I knew not that the Nasranies could say so ; all my meaning was that you should become a Moslem. Khalil, you may find some of the jcmmamil (camaleers, sing. >dl) of el-Kasim, that come about, at this season, to sell VOL. n. I 130 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA clothing among the Aarab. Yesterday I heard of one of them in these parts [it was false] ; a jemmal would carry thee back with him for two reals. When you have supped and drunk the evening camel milk, mount again with this Heteymy ! and he will convey thee to him " ; — but I read in his looks, that it was a fable. He went aside with Maatuk again, — was long talking with him ; and required him, with words like threatenings, to carry me from him. When we had supped, Maatuk called me to mount. I said to Ibn Nahal, "If I am forsaken in thia wilderness, or there should no man receive me, and I return to thee, wilt thou then receive me ? "— Khalaf answered, 'he would receive me.' In the first darkness of the night we rode from him ; seek- ing a ferij which Maatuk had espied as we came down from Genna. After an hour, Maatuk said, " Here is sand, shall we alight and sleep ? " — for yet we saw not their watcbfires — " Let us ride on : and if all fail tell me what shall become of me, my rafik?"— " Khalil, I have said it already, that I will carry thee again to live with me in my ferij." Then a hound barked from the dark valley side : we turned up thither, and came before three tents ; where a camel troop lay chawing the cud in the night's peace : their fires were out, and the Aarab were already sleeping. We alighted and set down our bags, and kneebouud the thelul. I would now have advanced to the booths, but Maatuk withheld me, — " It were not well, he whispered ; but abide we here, and give them time, and see if there come not some to call us." Bye and bye a man approached, and " Ugh ! said he, as he heard our salaam, why come ye not into the beyt ? " This worthy bore in his hand a spear, and a huge scimitar in the other. We found the host within, who sat up blowing the embers in the hearth ; and laid on fuel to give us light. He roused the housewife ; and she reached us over the curtain a bowl of old rotten leban, of which they make sour mereesy. We sipped their sorry night bever, and all should now be peace and confidence ; yet he of the spear and scimitar sat on, holding his weapons in his two hands, and lowered upon us. " How now, friend ! I said at last, is this that thou takest us for robbers, I and my rafik ? " — " Ugh ! a man cannot stand too much upon his guard, there is ever peril." Maatuk said merrily, " He has a sword and we have another ! " The host answered smiling, " He never quits that huge sword of his and the spear, waking or sleeping ! " So we perceived that the poor fellow was a knight of the moonshine. I said to our host, "I am a hakim from Damascus, and I go to el-Kasim : my rafik leaves me THK HOST, MOTLOG 1-°.1 here, rind will you send in.- t'nilli.-r for my moii'-y, four real He answered gently, " W® w^ see to-inorrow, find I think W6 may a-jree together, whether I m y thee, or I find another; in tin- meantime, .stay wit li in a, day or t' \Yhen wo would • housemother, the of tin- n.i.h-n ir-i,.-m, :\ tiling tn on*- of us, \\hich made me think wo were not wdl ;inived : she was a forsaken wif'o of our host's In-other. I asked Maatuk, " If such were the Harb manners !" — He whis- p- r.-d again, "As thou seest ; and Bay, Khalil, shall I leave thee aero, or wilt thon return with me ? " •— When the day broke, Maatuk said to them, "I leave him with you, take care of him :'' so he mounted and rodo from us. Moth(j (that was our host's name): "Let us walk down to Il)ii iSYthal, and take counsel how we may send thee to el-K, but I have a chapped heel and may hardly go." I dressed the wound with ointment and gave him a sock ; and the Beduwy drew o)i a pair of old boots that he had bought in Medina. We had gone half a mile, when I saw a horseman, with his long lance, riding against us : a fierce-looking fanatical fellow. — It was he who alone, of all who sat at Khalai's, had contraried me yesterday. This horseman was Tollog, my host's elder brother ! and it was his booth wherein we had passed the night ! his was also that honest forsaken housewife ! It were a jest worthy of the Arabs and their religion, to tell why the new wedded man chose to lie abroad at Ibn Nahal's. " IIow now ! " cries our horseman staring upon me like a man ngliast. His brother responded simply of the Shamy hakim and the Hcteymy, — " Akhs ! which way went that Heteymy ? " (and balancing his long lance, he sat up) I will gallop after him and bring him again, — Ullah curse his father ! and knowest thou that this is a Nasrany?" Motlog stood a moment astonished ! then the poor man said nobly, " Wa low, and though it be so . . . ? he is our guest and a stranger ; and that Heteymy is now too far gone to be overtaken." — Tollog rode further ; he was a shrew at home and ungracious, but Motlog was a mild man We passed by some spring pasture, and Motlog cried to a child, who was keeping their sheep not far off, to run home und tell them to remove hither. When the boy was gone a furlong he waved him back and shouted ' No ! ' for he had changed his mind : he was a little broken headed, — and so is every third man in the desert life. I saw, where we passed under a granite headland, some ground courses of a dry-built round chamber such as those which, in the western diras, I have supposed to be sepulchres. 132 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA Khalaf had removed since yesterday : we found him in his tent stretched upon the sand to slumber — it was noon. The rest made it strange to see me again, but Motlog my host worthily defended me in all. Khalaf turning himself after a while and rising, for the fox was awake, said with easy looks, " Aha ! this is Khalil back again ; and how Khalil, that cursed Heteymy forsook thee ? "