A Pilgrimage to Nejd Volume I Part 4

Here then we are comfortably housed under one of these bushes, where there is a delightful lull. The soil is all deep sand, white as snow, and the tent which we have rigged up is already half buried in it, so that we might imagine ourselves at home snowed up on Boxing Day. We have made a fire of tarfa sticks inside the tent, and have been enjoying Hanna's delicious coffee. Where is one ever so much at home as in one's own tent? Awwad surprised us very much to-day by objecting, when we proposed to pitch the tent, that it would be impossible to do so in the sand. If Mohammed or any of the townspeople had done so it would have been natural, but Awwad is a Bedouin born, and must have pitched camp hundreds of times in the Nefud. Yet he had never heard of burying a tent peg.

One misfortune has happened in the storm. The old rogue of a camel we bought at Mezarib, who has been trying all along to get back to his family, has given us the slip. Taking advantage of the darkness, and knowing that the wind would obliterate his track at once, he decamped as soon as unloaded, and is gone. Mohammed and Awwad, each on a delul, are scouring the country, but without a chance of finding him; for at best they can only see things a hundred yards off, and he was not missed for the first half hour. Mohammed has vowed to kill a lamb, but I fear that will do no good.

_December_ 27.-We have arrived at Kaf after a long march, twenty-seven or twenty-eight miles. Course about south-east!

In the night a little rain fell, and the wind moderated. At eight o'clock we started, crossing a wide plain of coa.r.s.e sand interspersed with low sandstone tells. At noon we came upon a well-marked track, the road of the salt caravans between Bozra and Kaf, which, after crossing a rather high ridge, brought us to a very curious valley; an offshoot, we were told, of the Wady Sirhan. The geological formation of this is singular; the crest of the ridge on either side the valley is of black rock with detached stones of the same-then yellow sandstone, then another black layer, then pure sand, then sand with isolated black stones, then a calcareous deposit, and at the bottom chalk. The actual bed of the wady is a fine white sand sprinkled over with tamarisk and guttub bushes. As we were crossing this our dogs started a jerboa, and, little creature though it is, it gave them much trouble to catch it. Its hops were prodigious, and from side to side and backwards and forwards, so that the dogs always ran over it, and s.n.a.t.c.hing, always missed it; till at last, as if by accident, it jumped into s.h.i.+ekhah's mouth. Abdallah and the rest were very anxious to eat it, but it was so mauled as to be beyond cooking. At three o'clock we crested another ridge, and from it suddenly came in sight of the great Wady Sirhan, the object of so many of our conjectures. It seems, however, to be no wady, but the bed of an ancient sea. A little black dot on the edge of a _subbka_ or salt lake, now dry, and just under a tall black tell, marked the oasis of Kaf, an infinitesimal village of sixteen houses, and a palm garden of about an acre.

I have had the misfortune to sprain my knee, an awkward accident, and very annoying in the middle of a journey. My delul, always a fidgety animal, gave a bolt just as I was leaning over to arrange something on the off side of the _shedad_, or saddle, and pitched me off. The pain is indescribable, and I fear I shall be helplessly lame for some time to come. But here we are at Kaf.

[Picture: Kaf]

CHAPTER V.

"Rafi ran after her with his sword drawn, and was just about to strike off her head, when she cried 'quarter.'"-ABULFEDA.

Kaf and Itheri-More relations-The Wady Sirhan-Locust hunting-Hanna sits down to die-Tales of robbery and violence-We are surprised by a ghazu and made prisoners-Sherarat statistics-Jof.

_December_ 28.-Kaf is a pretty little village, with a character of its own, quite distinct from anything one sees in Syria. All is in miniature, the sixteen little square houses, the little battlemented towers and battlemented walls seven feet high-seventy or eighty palm trees in a garden watered from wells, and some trees I took at first for cypresses, but which turned out to be a very delicate kind of tamarisk.

{84} Though so small a place, Kaf has a singularly flouris.h.i.+ng look, all is neat there and in good repair, not a battlement broken or a door off its hinges, as would certainly have been the case in Syria. There are also a good many young palms planted in among the older ones, and young fig trees and vines, things hardly ever found in the North. The people are nice looking and well behaved, though at first they startled us a little by going about all of them with swords in their hands. These they hold either sloped over their shoulders or grasped in both hands by the scabbard, much as one sees in the old stone figures of mediaeval martyrs, or in the effigies of crusaders.

Abdallah el-Kamis, Sheykh of the village, to whom we had letters from Huseyn, received us with great politeness; and a room in his house was swept out for our use. Like all the other rooms, it opened on to the court-yard, in the middle of which was tethered a two-year-old colt. Our room had been a storing place for wood, and was without furniture of any sort, but we were delighted to find also without inhabitants. The architecture here is very simple, plain mud walls with no windows or openings of any kind except a few square holes near the roof. The roof was of _ithel_ beams with cross rafters of palm, thatched in with palm branches. The princ.i.p.al room is called the kahwah or coffee room; and in it there is a square hearth at the side or in the middle for coffee-making. There is no chimney, and the smoke escapes as it can; but this is not so uncomfortable as it sounds, for the wood burnt here burns with a beautiful bright flame, giving out a maximum of heat to a minimum of smoke. It is the _ratha_ or _ghada_. {85} People sit round the hearth while coffee is being made, a solemn process occupying nearly half an hour.

As soon as we arrived, a trencher of dates was brought, dates of the last year's crop, all sticky and mashed up, but good; and later in the evening, we had a more regular dinner of burghul and boiled fowls. We are much struck with the politeness of everybody. Abdallah, our host, asked us at least twenty times after our health before he would go on to anything else; and it was not easy to find appropriate compliments in return. Everything of course is very poor and very simple, but one cannot help feeling that one is among civilized people. They have been making a great fuss with Mohammed, who is treated as a sheykh. Tudmur is well known by name, and at this distance is considered an important town.

Much surprise was expressed at finding a man of his rank in the semi-menial position Mohammed holds with us, and he was put to some polite cross-questioning in the evening as to the motive of his journey.

No Franjis have ever been seen at Kaf before, so the people say; and they do not understand the respect in which Europeans are held elsewhere.

Mohammed, however, has explained his "brotherhood with the Beg," and protested that his journey is one of honour, not of profit; so that we are treated with as much courtesy as if we were Arabs born. Awwad the Shammar has been of great use to us, as he is well known here, and he serves as an introduction.

Kaf is quite independent of the Sultan, though it has twice been sacked by Turkish soldiers, once under Ibrahim Pasha in 1834, and again only a few years ago, when the Government of Damascus sent a military expedition down the Wady Sirhan. We were shown the ruins of a castle, Kasr es-Sad, on a hill above the town which the former destroyed, and we heard much lamentation over the proceedings of the latter. The inhabitants of Kaf acknowledge themselves subjects of Ibn Ras.h.i.+d, the Jebel Shammar chief, some of whose people were here only a few days since, taking the annual tribute, a very small sum, twenty mejidies (4), which they are glad to pay in return for his protection. They are very enthusiastic about "the Emir," as they call him, and certainly have no reason to wish for annexation to Syria. The little town of Kaf and its neighbour Itheri, where we now are, have commercially more connection with the north than with the south, for their princ.i.p.al wealth, such as it is, arises from the salt trade with Bozra. Abdallah el-Kamis seems to be well off, for he possesses several slaves, and has more than one wife. But the colt I have mentioned is his only four-footed possession; he would have come with us, he said, if he had owned a delul. I noticed a few camels and donkeys and goats about the village.

Makbul, the Kreysheh, has gone back, and we now want to find a Sherari to take us on to Jof. We have come on to Itheri, Kaf's twin oasis, two and a half hours east of it, also in the Wady Sirhan. This is not marked on many of the modern maps, though Chesney has it incorrectly placed on his.

We find by the barometer that they are both on the same level, so that our conjecture seems confirmed, about the Wady Sirhan having no slope.

The Wady Sirhan is a curious chaotic depression, probably the bed of some ancient sea like the Dead Sea, and is here about twelve miles broad if we can judge by the hills we see beyond it, and which are no doubt the opposite cliffs of the basin. There are numerous wells both here and at Kaf, wide and shallow, for the water is only eight feet below the surface of the ground. From these the palm gardens are irrigated. There are wells too outside, all lying low and at the same level. The water is drinkable, by no means excellent. We crossed a large salt lake, now dry, where the salt is gathered for the caravans.

On our road Mohammed entertained us with tales of his birth and ancestry.

The people of Kaf have heard of the Ibn Arks, and have told Mohammed that he will find relations in many parts of Arabia besides Jof. They say there is somebody at Bereydeh, and a certain Ibn Homeydi, whom Mohammed has heard of as a cousin. Then here at Itheri, the Sheykh's wife is a member of the Jof family. Everything in fact seems going just as we expected it.

Itheri is a still smaller place than Kaf but it boasts of an ancient building and miniature castle inside the walls, something after the fas.h.i.+on of the Hauran houses. This, instead of mud, the common Arab material, is built of black stones, well squared and regularly placed.

On the lintel of the doorway there is or rather has been, an inscription in some ancient character, perhaps Himyaritic, which we would have copied had it been legible, but the weather has almost effaced it. {89} Here we are being entertained by Jeruan, an untidy half-witted young man, with long hair in plaits and a face like a Scotch terrier, who is the son of Merzuga, Mohammed's cousin, and consequently a cousin himself. Though nothing much to be proud of as a relation, we find him an attentive host.

His mother is an intelligent and well-bred woman, and it seems strange that she should have so inferior a son. Her other three sons, for Jeruan is the eldest of four, have their wits like other people, but they are kept in the background. Merzuga came to see me just now with a large dish of dates in her hand, and stopped to talk. Her face is still attractive, and she must have once been extremely beautiful. I notice that she wears a number of silver rings on her fingers like wedding rings.

Merzuga tells us we shall find plenty of Ibn Ark relations at Jof. She herself left it young and talks of it as an earthly paradise from which she has been torn to live in this wretched little oasis. Itheri is indeed a forlorn place, all except Jeruan's palm garden. After a walk in the palm garden, in which my lameness prevented me from joining, we all sat down to a very good dinner of lamb and sopped bread-the bread tasted like excellent pastry-served us by Jeruan in person, standing according to Arab fas.h.i.+on when guests are eating. His mother looks well after him, and tells him what to do, and it is evident, though he has the sense to say very little, that he is looked upon as not quite "accountable" in his family. Wilfrid describes the walk in the garden as rather amusing, Mohammed and Abdallah making long speeches of compliments about all they saw, and telling Jeruan's head man extraordinary stories of the grandeur and wealth of Tudmur. Jeruan's garden, the only one at Itheri, contains four hundred palm trees, many of them newly planted, and none more than twenty-five years old. Amongst them was a young tree of the _h.e.l.lua_ variety, the sweet date of Jof, imported from thence, and considered here a great rarity. At this there was a chorus of admiration. The ithel trees were also much admired. They are grown for timber, and spring from the stub when cut down, a six years' growth being already twenty feet high.

Two men have arrived from Jof with the welcome news that all is well between this and Jof; that is, there are no Arabs yet in the Wady Sirhan; welcome because we have no introductions, and a meeting might be disagreeable. The season is so late and the pasture so bad, that the Wady has been quite deserted since last spring. There will be no road now, or track of any kind, and as it is at least two hundred miles to Jof, we must have a guide to shew us the wells. Such a one we have found in a funny looking little Bedouin, a Sherari, who happens to be here and who will go with us for ten mejidies.

_December_ 29.-There was a bitter east wind blowing when we started this morning, and I observed a peewit, like a land bird at sea, flying hither and thither under the lea of the palm trees, looking hopeless and worn out with its long voyage. Poor thing, it will die here, for there is nothing such a bird can eat anywhere for hundreds of miles. It must have been blown out of its reckoning, perhaps from the Euphrates.

Our course to-day lay along the edge of the Wady, sometimes crossing stony promontories from the upper plain, sometimes sandy inlets from the Wady. The heights of these were always pretty much the same, 2250 feet above and 1850 below-so these may be taken as the respective heights of the Hamad and of the Wady Sirhan. There are besides, here and there, isolated tells, three hundred to four hundred feet higher than either.

Rough broken ground all day, princ.i.p.ally of sand with slaty grit sprinkled over it, the vegetation very scanty on the high ground, but richer in the hollows. In one small winding ravine leading into the Wady, we found ghada trees, but otherwise nothing bigger than shrubs.

There Awwad told us that two years ago he was robbed and stripped by a ghazu from the Hauran. He had lost six camels and all he possessed. The Haurani were eight in number, his own party six. I asked him how it was the robbers got the best of it. He said it was "min Allah" (from G.o.d).

The Wady Sirhan seems to be a favourite place for robbers, and Awwad takes the occurrence as a matter of course. I asked him why he had left his tribe, the Shammar, and come to live so far north as Salkhad. He said it was "_nasib_," a thing fated; that he had married a Salkhad wife, and she would not go away from her people. I asked him how he earned his living, and he laughed. "I have got half a mare," he said, "and a delul, and I make ghazus. There are nine of us Shammar in the Hauran, and we go out together towards Zerka, or to the western Leja and take cattle by night." He then showed us some frightful scars of wounds, which he had got on these occasions, and made Wilfrid feel a bullet which was still sticking in his side. He is a curious creature, but we like him, and, robber or no robber, he has quite the air of a gentleman. He is besides an agreeable companion, sings very well, recites ballads, and is a great favourite everywhere. At Kaf and Itheri he was hugged and kissed by the men, old and young, and welcomed by the women in every house.

We were nearly frozen all the morning, the wind piercing through our fur cloaks. At half-past twelve, after four hours' marching, we came to some wells called Kuraghir, six of them in a bare hollow, with camel tracks leading from every point of the compa.s.s towards them. It is clear that at some time of the year the Wady is inhabited; Awwad says by the Roala in winter, but this year there is n.o.body. The water, like that of Kaf and Itheri, is slightly brackish. Near Kuraghir we saw some gazelles and coursed them vainly. It is vexatious, for I have forgotten to bring meat, and unless we can catch or shoot something, we shall have none till we get to Jof. I ought to have thought of it, for, though provisions are by no means plentiful at Itheri, we could probably have bought a sheep and driven it on with us. The pain of my lameness distracted my attention-a bad excuse, but the only one. I suffer less when riding than at any other time.

We are now, since four o'clock, camped on the sand under some ghada bushes, and the wind has dropped for the moment. It seems always to blow here except for an hour about sunset and another at dawn. We are to dine on beef tea, burghul with curry sauce, and a water-melon, the last of our Hauran store.

_December_ 30.-On the high level all the morning over ground like the Harra with volcanic stones, a fierce south-east wind in our faces, so that we could not talk or hardly think. Our course lay towards an inhospitable looking range of hills called El Mizmeh, and when we reached these, to the right of them, for we travel in anything but a straight line. Saw great numbers of red locusts which, as the sun warmed the ground, began to fly about and were pursued by the men and knocked down with sticks. Enough have been secured to make a dish for dinner. When flying, these insects look very like large May flies, as they have the same helpless heavy flight, drifting down the wind with hardly sufficient power of direction to keep them clear of obstacles. Sometimes they fly right against the camels, and at others drop heavily into the bushes where they are easily caught. When sitting on the ground, however, they are hard to see, and they keep a good look-out and jump up and drift away again as you come near them. They seem to have more sense, than power of moving.

At two we came to more wells,-Mahiyeh-most of them choked up with sand, but one containing a sufficient supply of brackish water. These wells lay among clumps of tamarisk, out of which we started several hares which the greyhounds could not catch, as they always dodged back to cover.

Wilfrid and I waited behind for this fruitless hunting upon which our dinner depended, and did not join the rest of the party for more than a mile. Before we reached them we came upon Hanna, sitting on the ground on his _hedm_ (quilt and abba), and Ibrahim standing over him, both shouting, "_Wah_! _wah_! _wah_!" We could not conceive what had happened and could get no information from either of them, except that they were going to remain where they were. These two townspeople sitting on their beds all alone in the Wady Sirhan were so absurd a spectacle that, at the moment, we could not help laughing; but it was not an affair for laughter, and of course it was impossible to leave them there. We insisted on an explanation. There had been a quarrel between Hanna and Abdallah, because the latter had driven on Hanna's delul fast with the other camels, and refused to let it be made to kneel down and get up again. Abdallah and Awwab were in a great hurry to get as far from Mahiyeh as possible, because Hamdan the Sherari says it is a dangerous spot. But Hanna was angry, and in his anger he dropped his cloak; upon which he jumped down, pulling his bed after him, and sat down on the ground. There the others left him, wailing and raving, and in this state we found him. He proposed that he and Ibrahim should be left behind to be eaten up by the hyena whose tracks we had seen. However, Ibrahim, who had only stayed to keep him company, was quite ready to go on, and, seeing this, Hanna was not long in getting up, and, making his brother carry his bedding, he followed us. It was no good inquiring who was right or who was wrong; we stopped the camels, and, driving back the delul insisted on Hanna's mounting, which after some faces he did, and the episode ended. Mohammed has been commissioned to insist with the Arabs on peace, and we have we think prevailed with Hanna to bear no malice. It is absolutely impossible for anybody to go back now without losing his life, and I trust they will all be reasonable; it is disagreeable to think that there has been discord in our small party, separated as it is from all the rest of the world. We are camped now in a side wady where the camel pasture is good. We saw the place from a great distance, for we are becoming skilful now at guessing likely spots.

Wherever you see rocky ground in lines you may be sure pasture will be found. We have seen no sign of recent habitation in the country since leaving Itheri, neither footprint of camel nor of man.

The locusts fried are fairly good to eat.

_December_ 31.-Another long day's march, and here we are at the end of the year in one of the most desolate places in the world. It was so cold last night, that all the locusts are dead. They are lying about everywhere, and being eaten up by the little desert birds, larks, and wheatears. We have got down again into the main bed of the Wady Sirhan, which is still at the same level as before; it is here nearly flat, and covered with great bunches of guttub and other shrubs, all very salt to the taste; the soil crumbly and unsound, in places white with saltpetre.

Awwad and the Sherari declare that there are quicksands, _hadoda_ (literally, an abyss), somewhere in the neighbourhood, in which everything that pa.s.ses over sinks and disappears, leaving no trace-men, camels, and gazelles; but of such we saw nothing. Coasting the edge of the Wady, we came suddenly on some gazelles, which led us to higher ground, where we found a stony wilderness of the Harra type; and amongst the stones we saw a hyena trotting leisurely. We got nothing, however; neither him nor the gazelles, and are still without meat. No other incident occurred till we came to a palm tree standing by itself in an open place; near it, a charming little spring, quite in among the roots of a thick clump of palm bushes. The hole is about three feet across, and two deep, with about a foot of water in it; the water rises again as fast as it is taken out, but never overflows. There were traces of hyenas and gazelles about, and this, I suppose, is where the desert animals come to drink, for it is the only water above ground we have yet seen. This spring is called Maasreh (little by little)-a pleasant spot where we should have liked to camp; but it is always dangerous to stop near water, lest people should come. Awwad says there is some tradition of a town or village having formerly existed here; but no ruins are to be seen. The water is sweet and good, as might be perceived by the insects which were swimming about in it. The Arabs always judge of the wholesomeness of water in this way. There is nothing more suspicious in the desert than perfectly clear water, free from animal life.

We are now camped under a low cliff hollowed out into caves as if by water, capital dens for hyaenas. There is a beautiful view looking back at the Mizmeh hills. The evening is still and cold, but we do not like to make much fire for fear of enemies. Hamdan, our Sherari guide, an uncouth, savage creature to look at, has been reciting a very pretty ballad, which he tells us he made himself. It is in stanzas of four lines with alternate rhymes, and relates to an episode in his own family.

As he recited it the rest of the Arabs chimed in, repeating always the last word of the line with the rhyming syllable; it had a good effect.

The story was simple, and told how Hamdan's mother and sister had a quarrel, and how they brought their grievances before Obeyd ibn Ras.h.i.+d at Hal, and how the old Sheykh settled it by putting a rope round the daughter's neck, and bidding the mother hold the end of it, and do so for the rest of their days. Whereupon the daughter had kissed her mother, and Obeyd had sent them away with presents, a delul, a cloak each, and a hundred measures of wheat, a present he had continued giving them every year till he died, and which is given still by his nephew, Mohammed, the present ruler of Jebel Shammar. Hamdan has also given us an interesting account of the Hal politics, which agrees very closely with what we remember of Mr. Palgrave's, carrying them on to a later date. The present Ibn Ras.h.i.+d is not by any means so amiable a character as his brother Tellal; and Hamdan's account of his career is rather startling.

It appears that he has put to death something like a dozen of his relations, and is more feared than loved by the Shammar. This is very tiresome, as it may be a reason for our not going on to Nejd after all.

But we shall hear more when we get to Jof.

Hamdan's recitative was, as nearly as I could write the musical part of it, like this:-

[Picture: Two lines of music]

_January_ 1, 1879.-A black frost, but still. We have changed our course, and have been going all day nearly due south-twenty-five miles, as near as we can calculate it-and down the middle of the Wady Sirhan, a level plain of sand and grit, with here and there mounds of pure white sand covered with ghada. Our plan is to get up and strike the tents at the first glimpse of dawn, drink a cup of coffee, and eat a biscuit or a bit of rusk (kak), and then march on till three or four in the afternoon without stopping for an instant, eating half-a-dozen dates and some more rusk as we go. Then immediately on stopping, and before the tents are pitched, we light a fire and make coffee, which carries us on till dinner is ready, about sunset. It is wonderful how little food one can do with while travelling. We have had no meat now for the last four days till to-day, only beef tea, and burghul, and dates, with sometimes fried onions, or flour mixed with curry powder and b.u.t.ter, and baked into a cake. This last is very good, and easily made. To-day, however, we are in clover, as the dogs coursed a hare, and we dug her out. The desert hare is very little bigger than a large rabbit, and is literally too much for one, and not enough for two; but Mohammed magnanimously foregoes his portion, and says he can wait.

Mohammed has been improving the occasion of a dispute which arose this evening on a choice of camp, to tell us some stories of his own adventures in the desert; and we have been telling him ours. He had a younger brother, whom his mother was very fond of, a regular town boy with "a white face like a girl," who knew how to read and write and knew nothing of the desert (Mohammed himself like his great namesake, has always been a camel driver). Now at Tudmur they have constantly had fights and quarrels for the Sheykhat, and on one such occasion his brother was sent away by his parents to Sokhne, the neighbouring village, about thirty miles from Tudmur; and there he stayed for some time with a relation. At last, however, he got tired of being away from home, and wanted to see his mother. He started off with another boy of his own age (about fifteen) to walk back to Tudmur. It was in the middle of summer, and they lost their way and wandered far down into the Hamad where they died of thirst. Mohammed had gone out to look for them, and found them both dead close together.

On another occasion Mohammed himself was nearly meeting his death. He had gone alone with his camels on the road to Karieteyn, and had fallen in with a ghazu of robbers from the hills. These stripped him of everything except his s.h.i.+rt and a tarbush. His gun he had contrived to hide under a bush, but they left him nothing else, neither food nor water, and it was in the middle of summer. Karieteyn, the nearest place, was about forty miles off, and he was lame with a blow he had received.

However, when the robbers were gone, he set out in that direction, and managed to walk on till night and the next day, till he got to a ruin called Kasr el Hayr where he fell down senseless under the shade, and lay for twenty-four hours unable to move, and suffering agonies from thirst.

At last, when he had said to himself, "now I shall have to die," a party of camel men from Sokhne came by and found him lying there. At first they took him for a slave, for the sun had burnt him black, and his tongue was dried so that he could not speak. Fortunately one of the party recognised him, and then they gave him water. He still could give no account of himself, but they put him on a donkey and brought him with them to Tudmur.

Our own story was the one of our quarrel with Abunjad and our rush from Akaba to Gaza, when we so nearly perished of thirst.

The year would have begun prosperously, but for a severe cold Wilfrid has caught. He has lost his voice.

_January_ 2.-A hard frost-water frozen in the pail. Reached the wells of Shaybeh at half-past eight and watered the camels-water very brackish-level by aneroid 1950, depth to surface of water twelve feet.

Got into a sort of track, part of the morning, but one evidently not frequented. At one o'clock came to another well, near a curious rock which at first we took for a castle. We have now crossed the wady and are on its western bank. Pa.s.sed a ruined house of no great antiquity called Abu Kasr and another well near it, and at half-past four have encamped under some sand hills, crowned with ghada, a delightful spot not far from a fourth well called Bir el-Jerawi-level by barometer 1840.

Wilfrid has recovered his voice but still has a bad cold. I am as lame as ever, though in less pain. I sometimes think I shall never be able to walk again.

_Friday_, _January_ 3.-We have had an adventure at last and a disagreeable one; a severe lesson as to the danger of encamping near wells. We started early, but were delayed a whole hour at Jerawi taking water, and did not leave the wells till nearly eight o'clock. Then we turned back nearly due east across the wady. The soil of pure white sand was heavy going, and we went slowly, crossing low undulations without other landmark than the tells we had left behind us. Here and there rose little mounds tufted with ghada. To one of these Wilfrid and I cantered on, leaving the camels behind us, and dismounting, tied our mares to the bushes that we might enjoy a few minutes' rest, and eat our midday mouthful-the greyhounds meanwhile played about and chased each other in the sand. We had finished, and were talking of I know not what, when the camels pa.s.sed us. They were hardly a couple of hundred yards in front when suddenly we heard a thud, thud, thud on the sand, a sound of galloping. Wilfrid jumped to his feet, looked round and called out, "Get on your mare. This is a ghazu." As I scrambled round the bush to my mare I saw a troop of hors.e.m.e.n charging down at full gallop with their lances, not two hundred yards off. Wilfrid was up as he spoke, and so should I have been, but for my sprained knee and the deep sand, both of which gave way as I was rising. I fell back. There was no time to think and I had hardly struggled to my feet, when the enemy was upon us, and I was knocked down by a spear. Then they all turned on Wilfrid, who had waited for me, some of them jumping down on foot to get hold of his mare's halter. He had my gun with him, which I had just before handed to him, but unloaded; his own gun and his sword being on his delul. He fortunately had on very thick clothes, two abbas one over the other, and English clothes underneath, so the lances did him no harm. At last his a.s.sailants managed to get his gun from him and broke it over his head, hitting him three times and smas.h.i.+ng the stock. Resistance seemed to me useless, and I shouted to the nearest horseman, "_ana dahilak_" (I am under your protection), the usual form of surrender. Wilfrid hearing this, and thinking he had had enough of this unequal contest, one against twelve, threw himself off his mare. The _khayal_ (hors.e.m.e.n) having seized both the mares, paused, and as soon as they had gathered breath, began to ask us who we were and where we came from. "English, and we have come from Damascus," we replied, "and our camels are close by. Come with us, and you shall hear about it." Our caravan, while all this had happened, and it only lasted about five minutes, had formed itself into a square and the camels were kneeling down, as we could plainly see from where we were. I hardly expected the hors.e.m.e.n to do as we asked, but the man who seemed to be their leader at once let us walk on (a process causing me acute pain), and followed with the others to the caravan. We found Mohammed and the rest of our party entrenched behind the camels with their guns pointed, and as we approached, Mohammed stepped out and came forward. "Min entum?" (who are you?) was the first question.

"Roala min Ibn Debaa." "Wallah? will you swear by G.o.d?" "Wallah! we swear." "And you?" "Mohammed ibn Ark of Tudmur." "Wallah?" "Wallah!"