[p.147]race, Syro-Egyptian,[FN#11] whereas their neighbour the Hijazi
is the pure Syrian or Mesopotamian.
A wonderful change has taken place in the Tawarah tribes, whilome
pourtrayed by Sir John Mandeville as "folke fulle of alle evylle
condiciouns." Niebuhr notes the trouble they gave him, and their
perpetual hankering for both murder and pillage. Even in the late
Mohammed Ali's early reign, no governor of Suez dared to flog, or to
lay hands upon, a Turi, whatever offence he might have committed within
the walls of the town. Now the Wild Man's sword is taken from him,
before he is allowed to enter the gates,[FN#12] and my old
acquaintance, Ja'afar Bey, would think no more of belabouring a Badawi
than of flogging a Fellah.[FN#13] such is the result of
[p.148]Mohammed Ali's vigorous policy, and such the effects of even
semi-civilisation, when its influence is brought to bear direct upon
barbarism.
To conclude this subject, the Tawarah still retain many characteristics
of the Badawi race. The most good-humoured and sociable of men, they
delight in a jest, and may readily be managed by kindness and courtesy.
Yet they are passionate, nice upon points of honour, revengeful, and
easily offended, where their peculiar prejudices are misunderstood. I
have always found them pleasant companions, and deserving of respect,
for their hearts are good, and their courage is beyond a doubt. Those
travellers who complain of their insolence and extortion may have been
either ignorant of their language or offensive to them by assumption of
superority,-in the Desert man meets man,-or physically unfitted to
acquire their esteem.
We journeyed on till near sunset through the wilderness without ennui.
It is strange how the mind can be amused by scenery that presents so
few objects to occupy it. But in such a country every slight
modification of form or colour rivets observation: the senses are
sharpened, and the perceptive faculties, prone to sleep over a confused
mass of natural objects, act vigorously when excited by the capability
of embracing each detail. Moreover, Desert views are eminently
suggestive; they
[p.149]appeal to the Future, not to the Past: they arouse because they
are by no means memorial. To the solitary wayfarer there is an interest
in the Wilderness unknown to Cape seas and Alpine glaciers, and even to
the rolling Prairie,-the effect of continued excitement on the mind,
stimulating its powers to their pitch. Above, through a sky terrible in
its stainless beauty, and the splendours of a pitiless blinding glare,
the Samun[FN#14] caresses you like a lion with flaming breath. Around
lie drifted sand-heaps, upon which each puff of wind leaves its trace
in solid waves, flayed rocks, the very skeletons of mountains, and hard
unbroken plains, over which he who rides is spurred by the idea that
the bursting of a water-skin, or the pricking of a camel's hoof, would
be a certain death of torture,-a haggard land infested with wild
beasts, and wilder men,-a region whose very fountains murmur the
warning words "Drink and away!" What can be more exciting? what more
sublime? Man's heart bounds in his breast at the thought of measuring
his puny force with Nature's might, and of emerging triumphant from the
trial. This explains the Arab's proverb, "Voyaging is victory." In the
Desert, even more than upon the ocean, there is present death: hardship
is there, and piracies, and shipwreck, solitary, not in crowds, where,
as the Persians say, "Death is a Festival";-and this sense of danger,
never absent, invests the scene of travel with an interest not its own.
Let the traveller who suspects exaggeration leave the Suez road for an
hour or two, and gallop northwards over the sands: in the drear
silence, the solitude, and the fantastic desolation of the place, he
will feel what the Desert may be.