A Pilgrimage to Nejd Volume I Part 6

While sitting in Ibn Dirra's house, we saw an instance of Ibn Ras.h.i.+d's paternal government, and the first sign of Wahhabism. The midday prayer was called from the roof of the mosque close by, for there is no minaret in Jof, but for some time n.o.body seemed inclined to move, taking our visit as an excuse. Then an old man with a sour face began lecturing the younger ones, and telling them to get up and go to pray, and finding precept of no avail, at last gave them the example. Still the main body of the guests sat on, till suddenly up jumped the two young soldiers who had come with us, and shouting "k.u.m, k.u.m," get up, get up, set to with the flats of their swords on the rest and so drove them to the mosque, all but our host, whose position as such made him sacred from a.s.sault.

It is very evident that religion is not appreciated here, and except the sour looking old man n.o.body seemed to take the praying seriously, for the soldiers when they had done their duty of driving in the others, came back without ceremony from the mosque. The outward show of religion does not seem natural among the Arabs.

Another sword dance to-night, and another carouse on lemonade.

_January_ 8.-A cloudy, almost foggy morning, and a shower of rain. We wished Dowa.s.s and his soldiers good-bye, and they really seemed sorry to part with us. They are extraordinarily good-tempered, honest people, and have treated us with great kindness. Dowa.s.s's last attention to me was the present of an enormous treng as big as a large cocoanut. The trengs are sour not sweet lemons, but they have a rind an inch thick, sweet enough to be eaten though very woolly.

Meskakeh, where we have come to-day, is about twenty miles from Jof, and there is a well-beaten track between the two places. We were a rather numerous party, as several Jofi came with us for company, and we have Areybi ibn Ark, Na.s.sr's son, and another Ark, a cousin of his, and a man with a gun who is by way of going on with us to Hal. All the party but ourselves were on foot, for the Jofi never ride, having neither horses nor camels nor even donkeys. One of the men had with him an ostrich eggsh.e.l.l slung in a sort of network, and used like a gourd to hold water. He told me that ostriches are common in the Nefd, which is now close by. The scenery all the way was fantastic, sometimes picturesque. First we crossed the punchbowl of Jof to the other side, pa.s.sing several ruined farms, the ground absolutely barren, and the lowest part of it covered with salt. The whole of this depression is but a mile across. Then our road rose suddenly a hundred feet up a steep bank of sand, and then again a hundred and sixty feet over some stony ridges, descending again to cross a subbkha with a fringe of tamarisks just now in flower, then tracts of fine ironstone gravel, undistinguishable from sheep's droppings. About two hours from Jof is a large water-hole, which the Jofi call a spring, the water about eight feet below ground. In the wadys where water had flowed (for it rained here about a month ago), there were bright green bulbous plants with crocus flowers, giving a false look of fertility. In other places there were curious mushroom rocks of pink sandstone topped with iron, and in the distance northwards several fine ma.s.ses of hill, Jebel Hammamiyeh or the pigeon mountains being the most remarkable. These may have been a thousand feet higher than Jof. Far beyond, to the north-east and east, there ran a level line of horizon at about an equal height, the edge of the Hamad, for all the country we have been crossing is within the area of the ancient sea, which, we suppose, must have included the Wady Sirhan, Jof and Meskakeh.

On one of the rocks I noticed an inscription, or rather pictures of camels and horses, cut on a flat surface about five feet across. We could not, however, under the circ.u.mstances, copy it.

Meskakeh, though not the seat of Johar's government, is a larger town than Jof-seven hundred houses they say, and palm gardens at least twice as extensive as the other's. The position of the two towns is much the same, a broad hollow surrounded by cliffs of sandstone, but the Meskakeh basin is less regular, and is broken up with sandhills and outlying tells of rock. Meskakeh, like Jof, has an ancient citadel perched on a cliff about a hundred feet high, and dominating the town. The town itself is irregularly built, and has no continuous wall round its gardens. There are many detached gardens and groups of houses, and these have not been ruined as those of Jof have been by recent wars. Altogether, it has an exceedingly flouris.h.i.+ng look, not an acre of irrigable land left unplanted. Everything is neat and clean, the walls fresh battlemented, and every house trim as if newly built. The little square plots of barley are surrounded each by its hedge of wattled palm branches, and the streets and lanes are scrupulously tidy. Through these we rode without stopping, and on two miles beyond, to Na.s.sr's farm. We are now in the bosom of the Ibn Ark family, after all no myth, but a hospitable reality, receiving us with open arms, as if they had been expecting us every day for the last hundred years. They know the Ibn Ark ballad and Mohammed's genealogy far better than he knows it himself, so for the time at least we may hope to be in clover, and if after all we get no further, we may feel that we have travelled not quite in vain.

CHAPTER VII.

"And Leah was tender eyed but Rachel was beautiful."-BOOK OF GENESIS.

The Ibn Arks of Jof-Mohammed contracts a matrimonial alliance-Leah and Rachel.-We cheapen the bride's dower-A negro governor and his suite-A thunder-storm.

WE stayed three days with Na.s.sr and his sons, and his sons' wives and their children, in their quiet farm house. It was a rest which we much needed, and proved besides to be an interesting experience, and an excellent opportunity of learning more of Arab domestic life than we had done on our previous journeys. Not that the Ibn Arks of Meskakeh are in themselves of any particular interest. Like their relations of Tudmur, they have been too long settled down as mere townspeople, marrying the daughters of the land, and adopting many of the sordid town notions, but they were honest and kind-hearted, and the traditions of their origin, still religiously preserved, cast an occasional gleam of something like romance on their otherwise matter of fact lives. Na.s.sr, the best of the elder generation, resembled some small Scottish laird, poor and penurious, but aware of having better blood in his veins than his neighbours-one whose thought, every day in the year but one, is of how to save sixpence, but who on that one day shows himself to be a gentleman, and the head of a house. His sons were quiet, modest, and unpretending, and, like most young Arabs, more romantically inclined than their father.

They even had a certain appreciation of chivalrous ideas; especially Turki, the elder, in whom the Bedouin blood and Bedouin traditions predominated almost to the exclusion of commercial instincts, while in his brother Areybi, these latter more than counterbalanced the former.

We liked both the brothers, of course preferring Turki, with whom Wilfrid made great friends.

Mohammed is less distantly related to these people than I had supposed.

His ancestor, Ali ibn Ark, was one of the three brothers who, in consequence of a blood feud, or, as Wilfrid thinks more likely, to escape the Wahhabi tyranny of a hundred years ago, left Aared in Nejd, and came north as far as Tudmur, where Ali married and remained. Another brother, Abd el-Kader ibn Ark, had stopped at Jof, settled there, and became Na.s.sr's grandfather. As to the third, Mutlakh, the descendants of the two former know nothing of his fate, except that, liking neither Tudmur nor Jof he returned towards Nejd. Some vague report of his death reached them, but n.o.body can tell when or how he died. Na.s.sr came from Jof to Meskakeh not many years ago.

Na.s.sr is now the head of the family, at least of that branch of it which inhabits the Meskakeh oasis. But there lives in an adjoining house to his, his first cousin, Jazi ibn Ark, brother to our friend Merzuga, and father to two pretty daughters. These, with a few other relations, make up a pleasant little family party, all living in their outlying farm together.

Of course our first thought on coming amongst them was for a wife for Mohammed, at whose request I took an early opportunity of making acquaintance with the women of the family. I found them all very friendly and amiable, and some of them intelligent. Most of the younger ones were good looking. The most important person in the harim was Na.s.sr's wife, a little old lady named Shemma (candle), thin and wizened, and wrinkled, with long grey locks, and the weak eyes of extreme old age; and, though she can have been hardly more than sixty, she seemed to be completely worn out. She was the mother of Turki and Areybi; and I had heard from Mohammed that Na.s.sr had never taken another wife but her. In this, however, he was mistaken, for on my very first visit, she called in a younger wife from the adjoining room, and introduced her at once to me.

The second wife came in with two little boys of two and three years old, the eldest of whom (for they all have extraordinary names) is called Mattrak, "stick;" in spite of which he seemed an amiable, good-tempered child. In this he resembled his mother, whose respectful manner towards her elder, Shemma, impressed me favourably; she had, besides, a really beautiful face. The little boy, Mattrak, I recognised as a boy I had seen in the morning with old Na.s.sr in our garden, and supposed to be his grandson. Na.s.sr was doing his best to spoil the child, after the fas.h.i.+on of old men among the Arabs. I had then given Mattrak a little red frock, one I had bought for Sotamm's boy, Mansur, when we thought we were going to the Roala, and in this the child was now strutting about, showing off his finery to two very pretty little girls, his sisters. These two ran in and out during my visit, helping to bring bowls of dates, and to eat the dates when brought. Next appeared Turki's two wives, a pretty one and a plain one, and Areybi's one wife, pretty, and lately married. All these seemed to be on better terms with one another than is usually the case among mixed wives and daughters-in-law. They were extremely anxious to please me, and I, of course, did my best to satisfy their hospitable wishes about eating. They offered me dates of countless kinds,-dry ones and sticky ones, sweet and less sweet, long dried ones, and newer ones, a ma.s.s of pulp; it was impossible for one person to do justice to them all.

Shemma treated all the young people with the air of one in authority, though her tone with them was kind. She, however, spoke little, while the others talked incessantly and asked all sorts of questions, requiring more knowledge of Arabic than I possessed to answer. In the middle of the visit, Nazzch, Na.s.sr's married daughter, own sister to Turki and Areybi, arrived with her daughter, and an immense bowl of dates. She had walked all the way from the town of Meskakeh, about three miles, carrying this child, a fat heavy creature of four, as well as the dates, and came in, panting and laughing, to see me. She was pleasant and lively, very like her brother Turki in face, that is to say, good-tempered rather than good-looking. Any one of these young ladies, seen on my first visit, might have done for Mohammed's project of marriage, but, unfortunately, they were all either married or too young. I asked if there were no young ladies already "out," and was told that there were none in Na.s.sr's house, but that his cousin Jazi had two grown-up daughters, not yet married; so I held my peace till there should be an opportunity of seeing them.

Mohammed, in the meantime, had already begun to make inquiries on his own account, and the first day of our visit was not over before he came to me with a wonderful account of these very daughters of Jazi. There were three of them, he declared, and all more beautiful each than the others, Asr (afternoon), Hamu and Muttra-the first two unfortunately betrothed already, but Muttra still obtainable. I could see that already he was terribly in love, for with the Arabs, a very little goes a long way; and never being allowed to see young ladies, they fall in love merely through talking about them. He was very pressing that I should lose no time about making my visit to their mother, and seemed to think that I had been wasting my time sadly on the married cousin. Mohammed has all along declared that he must be guided by my opinion. I shall know, he pretends, at once, not only whether Muttra is pretty, but whether good-tempered, likely to make a good wife. He had been calculating, he said, and thought forty pounds would be asked as her dower. It is a great deal to be sure, but then she was really "asil," and the occasion was a unique one-a daughter of Jazi!-a niece of Merzuga!-a girl of such excellent family!-an Ibn Ark! and Ibn Arks were not to be had every day!-forty pounds would hardly be too much. He trusted all to my judgment-I had so much discernment, and had seen the wives and daughters of all the anazeh Sheykhs; I should know what was what, and should not make a mistake. Still, he would like Abdallah to go with me, just to spy out things. Abdallah, as a relation, might be admitted to the door on such an occasion, though he, Mohammed, of course could not; he might, perhaps, even be allowed to see the girl, as it were, by accident. With us, the Ibn Arks, the wives and daughters are always veiled, a custom we brought with us from Nejd, for we are not like the Bedouins; yet on so important an occasion as this, of arranging a marriage, a man of a certain age, a dependant, or a poor relation, is sometimes permitted to see and report. I promised that I would do all I could to expedite the matter.

Accordingly, the next day Turki was sent for, and a word dropped to him of the matter in hand, and he was forthwith dispatched to announce my visit to the mother of the daughters of Jazi-Mohammed explaining, that it was etiquette that the mother should be made acquainted with the object of my visit, though not necessarily the daughters. Then we went to Jazi's house, Turki, Abdallah, and I.

Jazi's house is close to Na.s.sr's, only the garden wall dividing them, and is still smaller than his, a poor place, I thought, to which to come for a princess; but in Arabia one must never judge by externals. At the door, among several women, stood Saad, Jazi's eldest son, who showed us through the courtyard to an inner room, absolutely dark, except for what light might come in at the doorway. It is in Arabia that the expression "to darken one's door," must have been invented, for windows there are none in any of the smaller houses. There was a smell of goats about the place, and it looked more like a stable than a parlour for reception. At first I could see nothing, but I could hear Saad, who had plunged into the darkness, shaking something in a corner, and as my eyes got accustomed to the twilight, this proved to be a young lady, one of the three that I had come to visit. It was Asr the second, a great, good-looking girl, very like her cousin Areybi, with his short aquiline nose and dark eyes. She came out to the light with a great show of shyness and confusion, hiding her face in her hands, and turning away even from me; nor would she answer anything to my attempts at conversation. Then, all of a sudden, she broke away from us, and rushed across the yard to another little den, where we found her with her mother and her sister Muttra. I hardly knew what to make of all this, as besides the shyness, I thought I could see that Asr really meant to be rude, and the polite manners of her mother Haliyeh and her little sister Muttra confirmed me in this idea. I liked Muttra's face at once; she has a particularly open, honest look, staring straight at one with her great dark eyes like a fawn, and she has, too, a very bright fresh colour, and a pleasant cheerful voice. I paid, then, little attention to Asr's rudeness, and asked the little girl to walk with me round their garden, which she did, showing me the few things there were to be seen, and explaining about the well, and the way they drew the water. The garden, besides the palm trees, contained figs, apricots, and vines, and there was a little plot of green barley, on which some kids were grazing.

Muttra told me that in summer they live on fruit, but that they never preserve the apricots or figs, only the dates. I noticed several young palm trees, always a sign of prosperity. The well was about ten feet square at the top, and carefully faced with stone, the water being only a few feet below the surface of the ground. Water, she told me, could be found anywhere at Meskakeh by digging, and always at the same depth. I was pleased with the intelligence Muttra showed in this conversation, and pleased with her pretty ways and honest face, and decided in my own mind without difficulty that Mohammed would be most fortunate if he obtained her in marriage. It was promising, too, for their future happiness, to remark that Haliyeh, the mother, seemed to be a sensible woman; only I could not understand the strange behaviour of the elder sister Asr.

Abdallah, in the meanwhile, standing at the door, had made his notes, and come to much the same conclusion as myself; so we returned with an excellent report to give to the impatient suitor waiting outside.

Mohammed's eagerness was now very nearly spoiling the negotiation, for he at once began to talk of his intended marriage; and the same thing happened to him in consequence, which happened long ago to Jacob, the son of Isaac. Jazi, imitating the conduct of Laban, and counting upon his cousin's anxiety to be married, first of all increased the dower from forty pounds to sixty, and then endeavoured to subst.i.tute Leah for Rachel, the ill-tempered Asr for the pretty Muttra.

This was a severe blow to Mohammed's hopes, and a general council was called of all the family to discuss it and decide. The council met in our tent, Wilfrid presiding; on one side sat Mohammed, with Na.s.sr as head of the house; on the other, Jazi and Saad, representing the bride, while between them, a little shrivelled man knelt humbly on his knees, who was no member of the family, but, we afterwards learned, a professional go-between. Outside, the friends and more distant relations a.s.sembled, Abdallah and Ibrahim Kasir, and half a dozen of the Ibn Arks. These began by sitting at a respectful distance, but as the discussion warmed, edged closer and closer in, till every one of them had delivered himself of an opinion.

Mohammed himself was quite in a flutter, and very pale; and Wilfrid conducted his case for him. It would be too long a story to mention all the dispute, which sometimes was so warmly pressed, that negotiations seemed on the point of being broken off. Jazi contended that it was impossible he should give his younger daughter, while the elder ones remained unmarried. "Hamu, it was true, was engaged, and of her there was no question, but Asr, though engaged too, was really free; Jeruan, the shock-headed son of Merzuga, to whom she was betrothed, was not the husband for her. He was an imbecile, and Asr would never marry him. If a girl declares that she will not marry her betrothed, she is not engaged, and has still to seek a husband she likes. But this would not do. We cited the instance of Jedaan's marriage with an engaged girl, and the unfortunate sequel, as proving that Jeruan's consent was necessary for Asr, and Mohammed chimed in, "Ya ibn ammi, ya Jazi, O Jazi! O son of my uncle how could I do this thing, and sin against my cousin? How could I take his bride? Surely this would be a shame to us all." In fine, we insisted that Muttra it should be or n.o.body, and Asr's claim was withdrawn. Still it was pleaded, Muttra was but a child, hardly fifteen, and unfit for so great a journey as that to Tudmur. Where indeed was Tudmur? who of all the Jofi had ever been so far? Mohammed, however, replied that if youth were an obstacle, a year or two would mend that.

He was content to wait for a year, or two, or even for three years, if need were. He was an Ibn Ark, and trained to patience. As to Tudmur, it was far, but had we not just come thence, and could we not go back?

He would send one of his brothers at the proper time, with twenty men, thirty, fifty, to escort her. So argued, the marriage project was at last adopted, as far as Muttra was concerned. But the question of "settlements" was not as easily got over. Here it was very nearly being wrecked for good and all. Wilfrid had all along intended to pay the dower for Mohammed, but he would not say so till the thing was settled, and left Mohammed to fight out the question of jointure to as good a bargain as they could make. This Mohammed was very capable of doing, despite the infirmity of his heart, and strengthened by Abdallah, who took a strictly commercial view of the whole transaction, a middle sum was agreed on, and the conference broke up.

Things, however, were not yet to go off quite smoothly. On the day following, when I went with some little presents for the bride to Jazi's house, I was met at the door by Jazi himself, who received me, as I at once perceived, with an embarra.s.sed air, as also did Haliyeh, for both she and a strange relation were sitting in the kahwah. To my questions about Muttra short answers were given; and the conversation was at once turned on "the weather and the crops," or rather on that Arabian subst.i.tute for it, a discussion about locusts. We had had a heavy thunderstorm in the morning, for which all were thankful. It would bring gra.s.s in the Nefd, but the locusts there, never were so numerous as this year. Again I asked about the girls, but again got no reply; and at last, tired of their idle talk, and quite out of patience, I exclaimed, "O Jazi, what is this? I trust that you-and you, O Haliyeh,-are pleased at this connection with Mohammed." To which he replied, in a sing-song voice, "Inshallah, inshallah," and Haliyeh repeated "Inshallah," and the stranger. I saw that something must be wrong, for it was no answer to my question, and rose to go. Then Haliyeh went out with me into the yard, and explained what had happened. Asr, it appeared, with her violent temper, was frightening them all out of their wits. She would not hear of her sister being married before herself, or making so much better a match. Jeruan she despised, though he was Sheykh of Kaf; and she wanted to marry the Sheykh of Tudmur herself. She had tormented old Jazi into withdrawing his consent; and Muttra was afraid of her. What was to be done? I said it was no use arguing about this over again; that if she and her husband were really not able to manage their daughters, we must look out elsewhere for Mohammed; that I hoped and trusted Asr would not be so foolish as to stand in the way of her sister's happiness, for it would not profit her. This bad temper of hers made it more than ever certain that she could not marry Mohammed, and, in fine, that the family must make up their minds, yes or no, about Muttra, and at once, for we were leaving Meskakeh presently, and must have the matter settled. I then saw the two girls, and spoke to them in the same strain, and with such effect that a few hours later, Mohammed, who had fallen into low spirits about the affair, now came with a joyful countenance to say that the marriage contract would be signed that evening.

Signed, therefore, it was, though to the last moment difficulty on difficulty was raised, and a lamentably haggling spirit displayed by all except Turki in the matter of the dower. Fifty Turkish pounds was, however, the sum ultimately fixed on; and Wilfrid refused curtly to advance a beshlik beyond it, even to buy off a cousin who unaccountably appeared on the scene and claimed his right to Muttra or an equivalent for her in coin. It was not very dignified this chaffering about price; and people do better in England, leaving such things to be settled by their lawyers.

Everything, however, was at last arranged, the marriage contract written out and signed, and everybody made happy. Then the rest of the evening was spent in jubilation. A kid was killed and eaten, songs sung, and stories told, nor was, as might be expected, the Ark ballad left out of the programme. Na.s.sr is a poet, and recited an ode impromptu for the occasion. Among the guests were two pilgrims from Mecca-so at least they called themselves-and some men who had run away from the Turkish conscription in Syria. These feasted with the rest, as though they too had been relations. And so ended Mohammed's marriage negotiations. He is to come back next year or send for Muttra; but for the present he is to be content and wait.

While this family arrangement was in progress, we had also on hand a more important negotiation of our own, and that was to get the governor's permission for our journey on to Hal. The first thing to be done was to make friends with Johar, for all in this despotic country depends upon his good will and pleasure; and if he had chosen to send us back to Kaf by the Wady Sirhan, I do not know that we could have offered any resistance. Jof is not an easy place to get away from. It is more than three hundred miles from the nearest point on the Euphrates, and without the governor's leave no one would have dared to travel a mile with us.

Accordingly, the day after our arrival at Meskakeh, we called on Johar, who had been warned of our visit, and received us in state.

Johar is a perfectly black negro, with repulsive African features; tall, and very fat, and very vain. He had put on his finest clothes to receive us, a number of gaudy silk jibbehs one over the other, a pair of sky-blue trousers-things new to us in Arabia-a black and gold abba, and a purple kefiyeh. His s.h.i.+rt was stiff with starch, and crackled every time he moved. He carried a handsome gold-hilted sword, and looked altogether as barbaric a despot as one need wish to see. He kept us waiting nearly ten minutes in the kahwah, to add, I suppose, to his importance, and then came in behind a procession of armed men, all of them well got up with silver hilted swords, silver ornamented belts, and blue and red kefiyehs bound with thick white aghals. He affected the affable, rather languid air of a royal personage, pa.s.sing from one subject of conversation to another without transition, and occasionally asking explanations of our remarks or questions from one or other of his attendants. It struck me as eminently absurd to see this negro, who is still a slave, the centre of an adulous group of white courtiers, for all these Arabs, n.o.ble as many of them are in blood, were bowing down before him, ready to obey his slightest wink and laugh at his poorest joke. After the first few moments of dignified silence, Johar, as I have said, became affable, and began asking the news. We had come from the north, and could tell him all about the war. What was Sotamm doing and what was Ibn Smeyr,-the latter evidently a hero with the Jofi or rather with the Hal people, for they are not friends with Sotamm, and old Mohammed Dukhi is considered Sotamm's great rival. We were glad to be able to say that we had seen Ibn Smeyr himself at Damascus not a month ago. Johar told us in return of a report recently brought in to Meskakeh by some Sleb that the Roala had been beaten in a fight with Mohammed Dukhi, and that Sotamm was killed-a report we were sorry to hear.

Then, but in a tone of minor interest, we were questioned about the Sultan. He had made peace with the Muscov, Johar was glad to hear it.

Peace was a good thing, and now "inshallah es Sultan mabsutin," "the Sultan, let us hope, was pleased;" this with a mock sentimental, patronising accent and a nasal tw.a.n.g in the voice, which was extremely comic. A little whispering then took place between Mohammed and one of the suite, which resulted in their going out together, to hand over to Johar the presents we had brought for him. Mohammed was, I believe, cross-questioned as to our position and the objects of our journey, and answered, as it had been agreed beforehand he should do, that we were going to Bussora to meet friends, and that we had come by way of Jof to avoid the sea-voyage. This, though of course not by any means the whole truth, was true as far as it went, and was a story easily understood and accepted by those to whom it was told. Mohammed added, moreover, that as we had happened to pa.s.s through the Emir's dominions, the English Beg was anxious to pay his respects to Ibn Ras.h.i.+d at Hal before going any further, and begged Johar to give us the necessary guides. This, after some discussion, and some coyness on the governor's part, he consented to do. His heart had been softened by the handsome clothes we had given him, and I believe a small present in money was also talked of between him and Mohammed.

When we were summoned again to Johar's presence, this time on the house-top, we found the negro's face wreathed in smiles, and our journey being discussed as a settled matter. Carpets were then spread, and we all sat down on the roof and had breakfast, boiled meat on rice, with a sharp sauce to pour over the rice, and then after the usual was.h.i.+ngs and el hamdu lillahs we retired, extremely pleased to get away from the flies and the hot sun of Johar's roof; and not a little thankful for the good turn things had taken with us. As Wilfrid remarked, when we were well on our mares again and riding home, Johar was just the picture of a capricious despot, and one who, if he had been in a bad humour, might have ordered our heads off, with no more ceremony than he had ordered breakfast. Our last day at Meskakeh was a quiet one.

_January_ 11.-Every morning since we have been here there has been a fog, and to-day (Sat.u.r.day), as I have already said, it has rained heavily.

The rain came with thunder and lightning, as I believe is almost always the case in this part of the world. I am much surprised to learn, in talking of the lightning, that n.o.body at Meskakeh has heard of people being killed by it, and Mohammed confirms the statement made here, by saying that the same is the case at Tudmur. He seemed astonished when I asked him, at lightning being thought dangerous, and says that accidents from it never occur in the desert. This is strange. The surface soil of Meskakeh is very nearly pure sand, and the rain runs through it as quickly as it falls, remaining only in a few hollows, where there is a kind of sediment hard enough to hold it.

In the afternoon the weather cleared, and we made a little expedition to the top of the low tell just outside Na.s.sr's farm. The tell is of sandstone rock, orange coloured below, but weathered black on the upper surface. It is not more than a hundred feet high, but standing alone, it commands a very extensive view, curious as all views in the Jof district are, and very pretty besides. In the fore-ground just below lay the farm, a square walled enclosure of three or four acres, with its palms and ithel trees, and its two low mud houses, and its wells, looking snug and trim and well to do. Beyond, looking westwards, three other farms were visible, spots of dark green in the broken wilderness of sand and sandstone rock, and then behind them Meskakeh, only its palm-tops in sight, and the dark ma.s.s of its citadel rising over them in fantastic outline. The long line of the palm grove stretched far away to the south, disappearing at last in a confused ma.s.s of sand-hills. These specially attracted our notice, for they marked the commencement of the Nefd, not indeed the great Nefd, but an outlying group of dunes tufted with ghada, and not at all unlike those pa.s.sed through by the Calais and Boulogne railway. Our route, we know, lies across them, and we are to start to-morrow.

While I sat sketching this curious view, Wilfrid, who had climbed to the top of a tall stone, crowning the hill, came back with the news that he had discovered an inscription. We have been looking out, ever since our arrival in the sandstone district, for traces of ancient writing, but have hitherto found nothing except some doubtful scratches, and a few of those simple designs one finds everywhere on the sandstone, representing camels and gazelles. Here however, were three distinctly formed letters, [Picture: Incised characters] two of them belonging to the Greek alphabet.

It was evident, too, by the colour of the incisions, that they had been there for very many years. On these we have built a number of historical conjectures relating to Meskakeh, and its condition in cla.s.sical times.

When we came home again, we found that Mohammed had been to make the last arrangements with Johar for our journey. The great man had raised objections at one point of the negotiations, but these had been settled by a _dahab_ or gold piece, and he has now agreed to send a man with us, a professional guide for crossing the Nefd. It seems that there are two lines by which Hal may be reached, one of thirteen and the other of ten days' journey. The first is better suited, they say, for heavy laden camels, as the sand is less deep, but we shall probably choose the shorter route, if only for the sake of seeing the Nefd at its worst.

For the Nefd has been the object of our dreams all through this journey, as the _ne plus ultra_ of desert in the world. We hear wonderful accounts of it here, and of the people who have been lost in it. This ten days' journey represents something like two hundred miles, and there are only two wells on the way, one on the second, and another on the eighth day. The guide will bring his own camel, and carry a couple of waterskins, and we have bought four more, making up the whole number to eight. This will have to suffice for our mares as well as for ourselves, and we shall have to be very careful. We have laid in a sufficient stock of dates and bread, and have still got one of the kids left to start with in the way of meat, the other has just been devoured as I have said, and cannot be replaced. Provisions of every kind are difficult to procure at Meskakeh; it was only by the exercise of a little almost Turkish bullying that Johar has been able to get us a camel load of corn.

The rain is over and the moon s.h.i.+ning. All our preparations are made for crossing the Nefd, and in a few hours we shall be on our way. We shall want all our strength for the next ten days.

[Picture: A Nejd sheep]

CHAPTER VIII.

"We were now traversing an immense ocean of loose reddish sand, unlimited to the eye, and heaped up in enormous ridges running parallel to each other from north to south, undulation after undulation, each swell two or three hundred feet in average height, with slant sides and rounded crests furrowed in every direction by the capricious gales of the desert. In the depths between the traveller finds himself as it were imprisoned in a suffocating sand pit, hemmed in by burning walls on every side; while at other times, while labouring up the slope, he overlooks what seems a vast sea of fire, swelling under a heavy monsoon wind, and ruffled by a cross blast into little red hot waves."-PALGRAVE.

Mohammed in love-We enter the red sand desert-Geology of the Nefd-Radi-The great well of Shakik-Old acquaintance-Tales of the Nefd-The soldiers who perished of thirst-The lovers-We nearly remain in the sand-Land at last.

_January_ 12.-We left the farm this morning in a thick fog, among the benedictions of the Ibn Arks. They have treated us kindly, and we were sorry to say good-bye to them, especially to Turki and Areybi, although we are a little disappointed in our expectations of the family in general. In spite of their n.o.ble birth and their Nejdean traditions, they have the failings of town Arabs in regard to money, and it was a shock to our feelings that Na.s.sr, our host, expected a small present in money at parting, nominally for the women, but in reality, no doubt, for himself. No desert sheykh, however poor, would have pocketed the mejidies. The boys too asked for gifts, the elder wanted a cloak, because one had been given to his brother, the younger, a jibbeh, because he already had a cloak; and other members of the household came with little skins full of dates or semneh in their hands, in the guise of farewell offerings, and lingered behind for something in return. All this of course was perfectly fair, and we were pleased to make them happy with our money; but it hardly tallied with the fine sentiments they had been in the habit of expressing, in season and out of season, about the duties of hospitality. Such small disappointments, however, must be borne, and borne cheerfully, for people are not perfect anywhere, and a traveller has no right to expect more abroad than he would find at home.

In England we might perhaps not have been received at all, while here our welcome had been perfectly honest at starting, whatever the afterthought may have been. So Wilfrid solemnly kissed the relations all round, and exchanged promises of mutual good-will and hopes of meeting; I went in to the harim to say good-bye to the rest of the family, and fortunately was not expected to kiss them all round; and then we set out on our way.

Our course lay due south over the sand hills we saw yesterday, and presently these shut out Meskakeh and its palm groves from our view, and we were once more reduced to our own travelling party of eight souls, with Radi our new guide, and fairly on the road to Hal. These sand dunes are not really the Nefd, and are much like what may be seen elsewhere in the desert, in the Sahara for instance, or in certain parts of the peninsula of Sinai. They are very picturesque, being of pure white sand, from fifty to a hundred feet high, with intervening s.p.a.ces of harder ground, and are covered with vegetation. The ghada here grows quite into a tree, with fine gnarled trunks, nearly white, and feathery grey foliage. We met several shepherds with their flocks, sent here to graze from the town, and parties of women gathering firewood. Mohammed amused us very much all the morning, talking with these wood gatherers.

He had managed to get a glimpse of his bride elect and her sister before starting, and fancies himself desperately in love, though he cannot make up his mind which of the two he prefers. Sometimes it is Muttra, as it ought to be, and sometimes the other, for no better reason, as far as we can learn, than that she is taller and older, for he did not see their faces. His conversations to-day with the wood gatherers shewed a _navete_ of mind neither of us suspected. He would ride on whenever he saw a party of these women, and when we came up was generally to be found in earnest discussion with the oldest and ugliest of them on the subject of his heart. He would begin by asking them whether they were from Meskakeh, and lead round the conversation to the Ibn Ark family, and if he found that the women knew them, he would vaguely ask how many daughters there were in Jazi's house, and whether married or unmarried.