"Every whyte must have its blacke,
And every sweete its soure-"
this charming coral reef was nearly being the scene of an ugly
accident. The breeze from seaward set us slowly but steadily towards
the reef, a fact of which we soon became conscious. Our anchor was not
dragging; it had not rope enough to touch the bottom, and vainly we
sought for more. In fact the "Golden Wire" was as disgracefully
deficient in all the appliances of safety, as any English merchantman
in the nineteenth century,-a circumstance which accounts for the
shipwrecks and for the terrible loss of life perpetually occurring
about the Pilgrimage-season in these seas. Had she struck upon the
razor-like edges of the coral-reef, she would have melted
[p.220] away like a sugar-plum in the ripple, for the tide was rising
at the time. Having nothing better to do, we began to make as much
noise as possible. Fortunately for us, the Rais commanding the
Persian's boat was an Arab from Jeddah; and more than once we had
treated him with great civility. Guessing the cause of our distress, he
sent two sailors overboard with a cable; they swam gallantly up to us;
and in a few minutes we were safely moored to the stern of our useful
neighbour. Which done, we applied ourselves to the grateful task of
beating our Rais, and richly had he deserved it. Before noon, when the
wind was shifting, he had not once given himself the trouble to wear;
and when the breeze was falling, he preferred dosing to taking
advantage of what little wind remained. With energy we might have been
moored that night comfortably under the side of Hassani Island, instead
of floating about on an unquiet sea with a lee-shore of coral-reef
within a few yards of our counter.
At dawn the next day (15th July) we started. We made Jabal
Hassani[FN#16] about noon, and an hour or so before sunset we glided
into Marsa Mahar. Our resting-place resembled Marsa Dumayghah at an
humble distance; the sides of the cove, however, were bolder and more
precipitous. The limestone rocks presented a peculiar appearance; in
some parts the base and walls had crumbled away, leaving a coping to
project like a canopy; in others the wind and rain had cut deep holes,
and pierced the friable material with caverns that looked like the work
of art. There was a pretty opening of backwood at the bottom of the
[p.221] cove; and palm trees in the blue distance gladdened our eyes,
which pined for the sight of something green. The Rais, as usual, would
have terrified us with a description of the Hutaym tribe that holds
these parts, and I knew from Welsted and Moresby that it is a debased
race. But forty-eight hours of cramps on board ship would make a man
think lightly of a much more imminent danger.
Wading to shore we cut our feet with the sharp rocks. I remember to
have felt the acute pain of something running into my toe: but after
looking at the place and extracting what appeared to be a bit of
thorn,[FN#17] I dismissed the subject, little guessing the trouble it
was to give me. Having scaled the rocky side of the cove, we found some
half-naked Arabs lying in the shade; they were unarmed, and had nothing
about them except their villainous countenances wherewith to terrify
the most timid. These men still live in limestone caves, like the
Thamud tribe of tradition; also they are Ichthyophagi, existing without
any other subsistence but what the sea affords. They were unable to
provide us with dates, flesh, or milk, but they sold us a kind of fish
called in India "Bui": broiled upon the embers, it proved delicious.
After we had eaten and drunk and smoked, we began to make merry; and
the Persians, who, fearing to come on shore, had kept to their
conveyance, appeared proper butts for the wit of some of our party: one
of us stood up and pronounced the orthodox call to prayer, after which
the rest joined in a polemical hymn, exalting the virtues
[p.222] and dignity of the first three Caliphs.[FN#18] Then, as general
on such occasions, the matter was made personal by informing the
Persians in a kind of rhyme sung by the Meccan gamins, that they were
the "slippers of Ali and the dogs of Omar." But as they were too
frightened to reply, my companions gathered up their cooking utensils,
and returned to the "Golden Wire," melancholy, like disappointed
candidates for the honours of Donnybrook.
Our next day was silent and weary, for we were all surly, and heartily
sick of being on board ship. We should have made Yambu' in the evening
but for the laziness of the Rais. Having duly beaten him, we anchored
on the open coast, insufficiently protected by a reef, and almost in
sight of our destination. In the distance rose Jabal Radhwah or
Radhwa,[FN#19] one of the "Mountains of Paradise[FN#20]" in which
honoured Arabia abounds. It is celebrated by poetry as well as by piety.
"Did Radhwah strive to support my woes,
Radhwah itself would be crushed by the weight,"
says Antar.[FN#21] It supplies Al-Madinah with hones. I heard much of
its valleys and fruits and bubbling springs, but afterwards I learned
to rank these tales with the superstitious legends which are attached
to it. Gazing at its bare and ghastly heights, one of our party, whose
wit was soured by the want of fresh bread, surlily remarked that such a
heap of ugliness deserved ejection from heaven,-an irreverence too
public to escape general denunciation. We waded on shore, cooked there,
and
[p.223] passed the night; we were short of fresh water, which, combined
with other grievances, made us as surly as bears. Sa'ad the Demon was
especially vicious; his eyes gazed fixedly on the ground, his lips
protruded till you might have held up his face by them, his mouth was
garnished with bad wrinkles, and he never opened it but he grumbled out
a wicked word. He solaced himself that evening by crawling slowly on
all-fours over the boy Mohammed, taking scrupulous care to place one
knee upon the sleeper's face. The youth awoke in a fiery rage: we all
roared with laughter; and the sulky Negro, after savouring the success
of his spite, grimly, as but half satisfied, rolled himself, like a
hedgehog, into a ball; and, resolving to be offensive even in his
forgetfulness, snored violently all night.
We slept upon the sands and arose before dawn (July 17), determined to
make the Rais start in time that day. A slip of land separated us from
our haven, but the wind was foul, and by reason of rocks and shoals, we
had to make a considerable detour.
It was about noon on the twelfth day after our departure from Suez,
when, after slowly beating up the narrow creek leading to Yambu'
harbour, we sprang into a shore-boat and felt new life when bidding an
eternal adieu to the vile "Golden Wire."
I might have escaped much of this hardship and suffering by hiring a
vessel to myself. There would then have been a cabin to retire into at
night, and shade from the sun; moreover, the voyage would have lasted
five, not twelve, days. But I wished to witness the scenes on board a
pilgrim ship,-scenes so much talked of by the Moslem palmer
home-returned. Moreover, the hire was exorbitant, ranging from L40 to
L50, and it would have led to a greater expenditure, as the man who can
afford to take a boat must pay in proportion during his lan
[p.224] journey. In these countries you perforce go on as you begin: to
"break one's expenditure," that is to say, to retrench expenses, is
considered all but impossible. We have now left the land of Egypt.
[FN#1] The reader who has travelled in the East will feel that I am not
exaggerating. And to convince those who know it only by description, I
will refer them to any account of our early campaigns in Sind, where
many a European soldier has been taken up stone dead after sleeping an
hour or two in the morning sun.
[FN#2] The Zodiacal Light on the Red Sea, and in Bombay, is far
brighter than in England. I suppose this is the "after-glow" described
by Miss Martineau and other travellers: "flashes of light like
coruscations of the Aurora Borealis in pyramidal form" would exactly
describe the phenomenon. It varies, however, greatly, and often for
some days together is scarcely visible.
[FN#3] Niebuhr considers that the stars are brighter in Norway than in
the Arabian deserts; I never saw them so bright as on the Neilgherry
hills.
[FN#4] Written in the days of the vans, which preceded the Railway.
[FN#5] On one occasion I was obliged personally to exert myself to
prevent a party of ladies being thrust into an old and bad transit-van;
the ruder sex having stationed itself at some distance from the
starting-place in order to seize upon the best.
[FN#6] Abraham, for breaking his father's idols, was cast by Nimrod
into a fiery furnace, which forthwith became a garden of roses. (See
Chapter xxi. of the Koran, called "the Prophets.")
[FN#7] David worked as an armourer, but the steel was as wax in his
hands.
[FN#8] Solomon reigned over the three orders of created beings: the
fable of his flying carpet is well known. (See Chapter xxvii. of the
Koran, called "the Ant.")
[FN#9] These are mystic words, and entirely beyond the reach of
dictionaries and vocabularies.
[FN#10] In Moresby's Survey, "Sherm Demerah," the creek of Demerah. Ali
Bey calls it Demeg.
[FN#11] See "The Land of Midian (Revisited)" for a plan of
Al-Dumayghah, and a description of Al-Wijh (al-Bahr) These men of the
Beni Jahaynah, or "Juhaynah" tribe-the "Beni Kalb," as they are also
called,-must not be trusted. They extend from the plains north of
Yambu' into the Sinaitic Peninsula. They boast no connection with the
great tribe Al-Harb; but they are of noble race, are celebrated for
fighting, and, it is said, have good horses. The specimens we saw at
Marsa Dumayghah were poor ones, they had few clothes, and no arms
except the usual Jambiyah (crooked dagger). By their civility and their
cringing style of address it was easy to see they had been corrupted by
intercourse with strangers.
[FN#12] It is written Wish and Wejh; by Ali Bey Vadjeh and Wadjih;
Wodjeh and Wosh by Burckhardt; and Wedge by Moresby.
[FN#13] The terrible Afghan knife.
[FN#14] These the Arabs, in the vulgar tongue, call Jarad al-Bahr, "sea
locusts"; as they term the shrimp Burghut al-Bahr, or the sea-flea.
Such compound words, palpably derived from land objects, prove the
present Ichthyophagi and the Badawin living on the coast to be a race
originally from the interior. Pure and ancient Arabs still have at
least one uncompounded word to express every object familiar to them,
and it is in this point that the genius of the language chiefly shows
itself.
[FN#15] The Arab superstition is, that these flashes of light are
jewels made to adorn the necks and hair of the mermaids and mermen.
When removed from their native elements the gems fade and disappear. If
I remember right, there is some idea similar to this among the Scotch,
and other Northern people.
[FN#16] The word Jabal will frequently occur in these pages. It is
applied by the Arabs to any rising ground or heap of rocks, and,
therefore, must not always be translated "Mountain." In the latter
sense, it has found its way into some of the Mediterranean dialects.
Gibraltar is Jabal al-Tarik, and "Mt. Ethne that men clepen Mounte
Gybelle" is "Monte Gibello,"-the mountain, par excellence.
[FN#17] It was most probably a prickle of the "egg-fruit," or Echinus,
so common in these seas, generally supposed to be poisonous. I found it
impossible to cure my foot in Al-Hijaz, and every remedy seemed to make
it worse. This was as much the effect of the climate of Arabia, as of
the hardships and privations of a pilgrimage. After my return to Egypt
in the autumn, the wound healed readily without medical treatment.
[FN#18] Abu Bakr, Omar, and Osman.
[FN#19] I have found both these forms of writing the word in books;
Moresby, or rather Mr. Rassam, erroneously spells it "Ridwah."
[FN#20] In a future chapter, when describing a visit to Mt. Ohod, near
Al-Madinah, I shall enter into some details about these "Mountains of
Paradise."
[FN21] The translator, however, erroneously informs us, in a footnote,
that Radhwah is a mountain near Meccah.
[p.225]CHAPTER XII.