PALGRAVE’S TRAVELS IN CENTRAL ARABIA: FROM PALESTINE TO THE DJOWF.
MR. WILLIAM GIFFORD PALGRAVE, son of Sir Francis Palgrave, the historian,
performed, in 1862–63, a journey in Arabia, which gives us the first
clear and full account of the interior of the country, including the
great Wahabee state of Nedjed, the early home of Arabian poetry and also
of the famous Arabian breed of horses. Mr. Palgrave’s qualifications for
the undertaking were in some respects superior to those of either
Burckhardt or Burton. To a high degree of general culture and a vigorous
and picturesque style as a writer, he added a knowledge of the Arabic
language and literature equal to that of any native scholar; he spoke the
language as well as his mother tongue; his features were sufficiently
Oriental to disarm suspicion, and years of residence in the East had
rendered him entirely familiar with the habits of the people and even
with all those minor forms of etiquette which are so rarely acquired by a
stranger. His narrative, therefore, is as admirable and satisfactory in
its character as the fields he traversed were new and fascinating. It
throws, indeed, so much indirect light upon the experiences of all his
predecessors, and is so much richer in its illustrations of Arab life and
character that no brief summary of its contents can do justice to its
importance.
[Picture: William Gifford Palgrave]
Of the first stage of the journey, from Gaza on the Mediterranean to the
little town of Ma’an, which lies on the route of the caravans from
Damascus to Mecca, a short distance to the northeast of Petra, and thus
nearly on the boundary between the country of Moab and Edom, Palgrave
gives us no account. Yet, in spite of the comparatively brief distance
traversed, it must have been both laborious and dangerous. His narrative
commences as follows, at the moment of his departure from Ma’an:
“Once for all let us attempt to acquire a fairly correct and
comprehensive knowledge of the Arabian Peninsula. With its coasts we are
already in great measure acquainted; several of its maritime provinces
have been, if not thoroughly, at least sufficiently, explored; Yemen and
Hedjaz, Mecca and Medina, are no longer mysteries to us, nor are we
wholly without information on the districts of Hadramaut and Oman. But
of the interior of the vast region, of its plains and mountains, its
tribes and cities, of its governments and institutions, of its
inhabitants, their ways and customs, of their social condition, how far
advanced in civilization or sunk in barbarism, what do we as yet really
know, save from accounts necessarily wanting in fulness and precision?
It is time to fill up this blank in the map of Asia, and this, at
whatever risks, we will now endeavor; either the land before us shall be
our tomb, or we will traverse it in its fullest breadth, and know what it
contains from shore to shore. _Vestigia nulla retrorsum_.”
“Such were my thoughts, and such, more or less, I should suppose, those
of my companion, when we found ourselves at fall of night without the
eastern gate of Ma’an, while the Arabs, our guides and fellow-travellers,
filled their water-skins from a gushing source hard by the town walls,
and adjusted the saddles and the burdens of their camels, in preparation
for the long journey that lay before us and them. It was the evening of
June 16, 1862; the largest stars were already visible in the deep blue
depths of a cloudless sky, while the crescent moon, high to the west,
shone as she shines in those heavens, and promised us assistance for some
hours of our night march. We were soon mounted on our meagre long-necked
beasts, ‘as if,’ according to the expression of an Arab poet, ‘we and our
men were at mast-heads,’ and now we set our faces to the east. Behind us
lay, in a mass of dark outline, the walls and castle of Ma’an, its houses
and gardens, and farther back in the distance the high and barren range
of the Sheraa’ Mountains, merging into the coast chain of Hejaz. Before
and around us extended a wide and level plain, blackened over with
countless pebbles of basalt and flint, except where the moonbeams gleamed
white on little intervening patches of clear sand, or on yellowish
streaks of withered grass, the scanty product of the winter rains, and
dried now into hay. Over all a deep silence, which even our Arab
companions seemed fearful of breaking; when they spoke it was in a half
whisper and in a few words, while the noiseless tread of our camels sped
stealthily but rapidly through the gloom without disturbing its
stillness.
“Some precaution was not indeed wholly out of place, for that stage of
the journey on which we were now entering was anything but safe. We were
bound for the Djowf, the nearest inhabited district of Central Arabia,
its outlying station, in fact. Now the intervening tract offered for the
most part the double danger of robbers and of thirst, of marauding bands
and of the summer season. The distance itself to be traversed was near
two hundred miles in a straight line, and unavoidable circumstances were
likely to render it much longer.”
Palgrave’s companion was a native Syrian, named Barakat—a man on whom he
could fully rely. Hardy, young, and enterprising, he belonged to a
locality whose inhabitants are accustomed to danger. But the Bedouins
who furnished the camels, and acted as guides, were of another class.
They were three in number—Salim, their leader, a member of a powerful
family of the Howeytat tribe, but outlawed for pillage and murder, and
two men, Alee and Djordee, utter barbarians in appearance no less than in
character. Even Salim advised the travellers to avoid all familiarities
with the latter.
“Myself and my companion,” says Palgrave, “were dressed like ordinary
class travellers of inner Syria, an equipment in which we had already
made our way from Gaza on the sea-coast to Ma’an without much remark or
unseasonable questioning from those whom we fell in with, while we
traversed a country so often described already by Pococke, Laborde, and
downward, under the name of Arabia Petra, that it would be superfluous
for me to enter into any new account of it in the present work. Our
dress, then, consisted partly of a long stout blouse of Egyptian hemp,
under which, unlike our Bedouin fellow-travellers, we indulged in the
luxury of the loose cotton drawers common in the East, while our colored
head-kerchiefs, though simple enough, were girt by ’akkals or headbands
of some pretension to elegance; the loose red-leather boots of the
country completed our toilet.
“But in the large travelling-sacks at our camels’ sides were contained
suits of a more elegant appearance, carefully concealed from Bedouin
gaze, but destined for appearance when we should reach better inhabited
and more civilized districts. This reserve toilet numbered articles like
the following: colored overdresses, the Syrian combaz, handkerchiefs
whose silk stripes relieved the plebeian cotton, and girdles of good
material and tasteful coloring; such clothes being absolutely requisite
to maintain our assumed character. Mine was that of a native travelling
doctor, a quack if you will; and accordingly a tolerable dress was
indispensable for the credit of my medical practice. My comrade, who in
a general way passed for my brother-in-law, appeared sometimes as a
retail merchant, such as not unfrequently visit these countries, and
sometimes as pupil or associate in my assumed profession.
“Our pharmacopoeia consisted of a few but well selected and efficacious
drugs, inclosed in small tight-fitting tin boxes, stowed away for the
present in the ample recesses of our travelling bags; about fifty of
these little cases contained the wherewithal to kill or cure half the
sick men of Arabia. Medicines of a liquid form had been as much as
possible omitted, not only from the difficulty of insuring them a safe
transport amid so rough a mode of journeying, but also on account of the
rapid evaporation unavoidable in this dry and burning climate. In fact
two or three small bottles whose contents had seemed to me of absolute
necessity, soon retained nothing save their labels to indicate what they
had held, in spite of airtight stoppers and double coverings. I record
this, because the hint may be useful to anyone who should be inclined to
embark in similar guise on the same adventures.
“Some other objects requisite in medical practice, two or three European
books for my own private use, and kept carefully secret from Arab
curiosity, with a couple of Esculapian treatises in good Arabic, intended
for professional ostentation, completed this part of our fitting-out.
But besides these, an ample provision of cloth handkerchiefs, glass
necklaces, pipe-bowls, and the like, for sale in whatever localities
might not offer sufficient facility for the healing art, filled up our
saddle-bags wellnigh to bursting. Last, but not least, two large sacks
of coffee, the sheet-anchor and main hope of our commerce, formed alone a
sufficient load for a vigorous camel.”
The first days of travel were a monotony of heat and desolation. The
deceptive lakes of the mirage covered the tawny plain, and every dark
basaltic block, lying here and there at random, was magnified into a
mountain in the heated atmosphere. “Dreary land of death, in which even
the face of an enemy were almost a relief amid such utter solitude. But
for five whole days the little dried-up lizard of the plain that looks as
if he had never a drop of moisture in his ugly body, and the jerboa, or
field-rat of Arabia, were the only living creatures to console our view.
“It was a march during which we might have almost repented of our
enterprise, had such a sentiment been any longer possible or availing.
Day after day found us urging our camels to their utmost pace for fifteen
or sixteen hours together out of the twenty-four, under a wellnigh
vertical sun, which the Ethiopians of Herodotus might reasonably be
excused for cursing, with nothing either in the landscape around or in
the companions of our way to relieve for a moment the eye or the mind.
Then an insufficient halt for rest or sleep, at most of two or three
hours, soon interrupted by the oft-repeated admonition, ‘if we linger
here we all die of thirst,’ sounding in our ears; and then to remount our
jaded beasts and push them on through the dark night, amid the constant
probability of attack and plunder from roving marauders. For myself, I
was, to mend matters, under the depressing influence of a tertian fever
contracted at Ma’an, and what between weariness and low spirits, began to
imagine seriously that no waters remained before us except the waters of
death for us and of oblivion for our friends. The days wore by like a
delirious dream, till we were often almost unconscious of the ground we
travelled over and the journey on which we were engaged. One only herb
appeared at our feet to give some appearance of variety and life; it was
the bitter and poisonous colocynth of the desert.
“Our order of road was this: Long before dawn we were on our way, and
paced it till the sun, having attained about half-way between the horizon
and the zenith, assigned the moment of alighting for our morning meal.
This our Bedouins always took good care should be in some hollow or low
ground, for concealment’s sake; in every other respect we had ample
liberty of choice, for one patch of black pebbles with a little sand and
withered grass between was just like another; shade or shelter, or
anything like them, was wholly out of the question in such ‘nakedness of
the land.’ We then alighted, and my companion and myself would pile up
the baggage into a sort of wall, to afford a half-screen from the
scorching sun-rays, and here recline awhile. Next came the culinary
preparations, in perfect accordance with our provisions, which were
simple enough; namely, a bag of coarse flour mixed with salt and a few
dried dates; there was no third item on the bill of fare. We now took a
few handfuls of flour, and one of the Bedouins kneaded it with his
unwashed hands or dirty bit of leather, pouring over it a little of the
dingy water contained in the skins, and then patted out this exquisite
paste into a large round cake, about an inch thick and five or six inches
across. Meanwhile another had lighted a fire of dry grass, colocynth
roots, and dried camels’ dung, till he had prepared a bed of glowing
embers; among these the cake was now cast, and immediately covered up
with hot ashes, and so left for a few minutes, then taken out, turned,
and covered again, till at last, half-kneaded, half-raw, half-roasted,
and burnt all round, it was taken out to be broken up between the hungry
band, and eaten scalding hot, before it should cool into an indescribable
leathery substance, capable of defying the keenest appetite. A draught
of dingy water was its sole but suitable accompaniment.
“The meal ended, we had again without loss of time to resume our way from
mirage to mirage, till ‘slowly flaming over all, from heat to heat, the
day decreased,’ and about an hour before sunset we would stagger off our
camels as best we might, to prepare an evening feast of precisely the
same description as that of the forenoon, or more often, for fear lest
the smoke of our fire should give notice to some distant rover, to
content ourselves with dry dates, and half an hour’s rest on the sand.
At last our dates, like Æsop’s bread-sack, or that of Beyhas, his Arab
prototype, came to an end; and then our supper was a soldier’s one; what
that is my military friends will know; but, grit and pebbles excepted,
there was no bed in our case. After which, to remount, and travel on by
moon or starlight, till a little before midnight we would lie down for
just enough sleep to tantalize, not refresh.
“It was now the 22d of June, and the fifth day since our departure from
the wells of Wokba. The water in the skins had little more to offer to
our thirst than muddy dregs, and as yet no sign appeared of a fresh
supply. At last about noon we drew near some hillocks of loose gravel
and sandstone a little on our right; our Bedouins conversed together
awhile, and then turned their course and ours in that direction. ‘Hold
fast on your camels, for they are going to be startled and jump about,’
said Salim to us. Why the camels should be startled I could not
understand; when, on crossing the mounds just mentioned, we suddenly came
on five or six black tents, of the very poorest description, pitched near
some wells excavated in the gravelly hollow below. The reason of Salim’s
precautionary hint now became evident, for our silly beasts started at
first sight of the tents, as though they had never seen the like before,
and then scampered about, bounding friskily here and there, till what
between their jolting (for a camel’s run much resembles that of a cow)
and our own laughing, we could hardly keep on their backs. However,
thirst soon prevailed over timidity, and they left off their pranks to
approach the well’s edge and sniff at the water below.”
The inhabitants of the tents showed the ordinary curiosity, but were not
unfriendly, and the little caravan rested there for the remainder of the
day. A further journey of two days over a region of sand-hills, with an
occasional well, still intervened before they could reach Wady Sirhan—a
long valley running directly to the populated region of the Djowf. While
passing over this intermediate region an incident occurred which had
wellnigh put a premature end to the travels and the travellers together.
“My readers, no less than myself,” says Palgrave, “must have heard or
read many a story of the simoom, or deadly wind of the desert, but for me
I had never yet met it in full force; and its modified form, or
_shelook_, to use the Arab phrase, that is, the sirocco of the Syrian
waste, though disagreeable enough, can hardly ever be termed dangerous.
Hence I had been almost inclined to set down the tales told of the
strange phenomena and fatal effects of this ‘poisoned gale’ in the same
category with the moving pillars of sand, recorded in many works of
higher historical pretensions than ‘Thalaba.’ At those perambulatory
columns and sand-smothered caravans the Bedouins, whenever I interrogated
them on the subject, laughed outright, and declared that beyond an
occasional dust-storm, similar to those which anyone who has passed a
summer in Scinde can hardly fail to have experienced, nothing of the
romantic kind just alluded to occurred in Arabia. But when questioned
about the simoom, they always treated it as a much more serious matter,
and such in real earnest we now found it.
“It was about noon, the noon of a summer solstice in the unclouded
Arabian sky over a scorched desert, when abrupt and burning gusts of wind
began to blow by fits from the south, while the oppressiveness of the air
increased every moment, till my companion and myself mutually asked each
other what this could mean, and what was to be its result. We turned to
inquire of Salim, but he had already wrapped up his face in his mantle,
and bowed down and crouching on the neck of his camel, replied not a
word. His comrades, the two Sherarat Bedouins, had adopted a similar
position, and were equally silent. At last, after repeated
interrogations, Salim, instead of replying directly to our questioning,
pointed to a small black tent, providentially at no great distance in
front, and said: Try to reach _that_; if we can get there we are saved.’
He added: ‘Take care that your camels do not stop and lie down;’ and
then, giving his own several vigorous blows, relapsed into muffled
silence.
“We looked anxiously toward the tent; it was yet a hundred yards off, or
more. Meanwhile the gusts grew hotter and more violent, and it was only
by repeated efforts that we could urge our beasts forward. The horizon
rapidly darkened to a deep violet line, and seemed to draw in like a
curtain on every side, while at the same time a stifling blast, as though
from some enormous oven opening right on our path, blew steadily under
the gloom; our camels, too, began, in spite of all we could do, to turn
round and round and bend their knees, preparing to lie down. The simoom
was fairly upon us.
“Of course we had followed our Arabs’ example by muffling our faces, and
now with blows and kicks we forced the staggering animals onward to the
only asylum within reach. So dark was the atmosphere, and so burning the
heat, that it seemed that hell had risen from the earth, or descended
from above. But we were yet in time, and at the moment when the worst of
the concentrated poison-blast was coming around, we were already
prostrate, one and all, within the tent, with our heads well wrapped up,
almost suffocated, indeed, but safe; while our camels lay without like
dead, their long necks stretched out on the sand, awaiting the passing of
the gale.
“On our first arrival the tent contained a solitary Bedouin woman, whose
husband was away with his camels in the Wady Sirhan. When she saw five
handsome men like us rush thus suddenly into her dwelling without a word
of leave or salutation, she very properly set up a scream to the tune of
the four crown pleas—murder, arson, robbery, and I know not what else.
Salim hastened to reassure her by calling out ‘friends,’ and without more
words threw himself flat on the ground. All followed his example in
silence.
“We remained thus for about ten minutes, during which a still heat like
that of red-hot iron slowly passing over us was alone to be felt. Then
the tent walls began again to flap in the returning gusts, and announced
that the worst of the simoom had gone by. We got up, half dead with
exhaustion, and unmuffled our faces. My comrades appeared more like
corpses than living men, and so, I suppose, did I. However, I could not
forbear, in spite of warnings, to step out and look at the camels; they
were still lying flat as though they had been shot. The air was yet
darkish, but before long it brightened up to its usual dazzling
clearness. During the whole time that the simoom lasted, the atmosphere
was entirely free from sand or dust, so that I hardly know how to account
for its singular obscurity.”
“Late in the evening we continued our way, and next day early entered
Wady Sirhan, where the character of our journey underwent a considerable
modification; for the northerly Arabian desert, which we are now
traversing, offers, in spite of all its dreariness, some spots of
comparatively better cast, where water is less scanty and vegetation less
niggard. These spots are the favorite resorts of Bedouins, and serve,
too, to direct the ordinary routes of whatever travellers, trade-led or
from other motives, may venture on this wilderness. These oases, if
indeed they deserve the name, are formed by a slight depression in the
surrounding desert surface, and take at times the form of a long valley,
or of an oblong patch, where rock and pebble give place to a light soil
more or less intermixed with sand, and concealing under its surface a
tolerable supply of moisture at no great distance below ground. Here, in
consequence, bushes and herbs spring up, and grass, if not green all the
year round, is at least of somewhat longer duration than elsewhere;
certain fruit-bearing plants, of a nature to suffice for meagre Bedouin
existence, grow here spontaneously; in a word, man and beast find not
exactly comfortable accommodation, but the absolutely needful supply.
Such a spot is Wady Sirhan, literally, the ‘Valley of the Wolf.’”
They entered Wady Sirhan on June 21st. “Passing tent after tent, and
leaving behind us many a tattered Bedouin and grazing camel, Salim at
last indicated to us a group of habitations, two or three of which seemed
of somewhat more ample dimensions than the rest, and informed us that our
supper that night (for the afternoon was already on the decline) would be
at the cost of these dwellings. ‘Ajaweed,’ _i.e._, ‘generous fellow,’ he
subjoined, to encourage us by the prospect of a handsome reception. Of
course we could only defer to his better judgment, and in a few minutes
were alongside of the black goats’ hair coverings where lodged our
intended hosts.
“The chief or chieflet, for such he was, came out, and interchanged a few
words of masonic laconism with Salim. The latter then came up to us
where we remained halted in expectation, led our camels to a little
distance from the tents, made them kneel down, helped us to disburden
them, and while we installed ourselves on a sandy slope opposite to the
abodes of the tribe, recommended us to keep a sharp lookout after our
baggage, since there might be pickers and stealers among our hosts, for
all ‘Ajaweed’ as they were. Disagreeable news! for ‘Ajaweed’ in an Arab
mouth corresponds the nearest possible to our English ‘gentlemen.’ Now,
if the gentlemen were thieves, what must the blackguards be? We put a
good face on it, and then seated ourselves in dignified gravity on the
sand awaiting the further results of our guide’s negotiations.
“For some time we remained undisturbed, though not unnoticed; a group of
Arabs had collected round our companions at the tent door, and were
engaged in getting from them all possible information, especially about
us and our baggage, which last was an object of much curiosity, not to
say cupidity. Next came our turn. The chief, his family (women
excepted), his intimate followers, and some twenty others, young and old,
boys and men, came up, and, after a brief salutation, Bedouinwise seated
themselves in a semicircle before us. Every man held a short crooked
stick for camel-driving in his hand, to gesticulate with when speaking,
or to play with in the intervals of conversation, while the younger
members of society, less prompt in discourse, politely employed their
leisure in staring at us, or in picking up dried pellets of dirt from the
sand and tossing them about.”
“‘What are you? what is your business?’ so runs the ordinary and
unprefaced opening of the discourse. To which we answer, ‘Physicians
from Damascus, and our business is whatsoever God may put in our way.’
The next question will be about the baggage; someone pokes it with a
stick, to draw attention to it, and says, ‘What is this? have you any
little object to sell us?’
“We fight shy of selling; to open out our wares and chattels in full air,
on the sand, and amid a crowd whose appearance and circumstances offer
but a poor guarantee for the exact observance of the eighth commandment,
would be hardly prudent or worth our while. After several fruitless
trials they desist from their request. Another, who is troubled by some
bodily infirmity, for which all the united faculties of London and Paris
might prescribe in vain—a withered hand, for instance, or stone-blind of
an eye—asks for medicine, which no sooner applied shall, in his
expectation, suddenly restore him to perfect health and corporal
integrity. But I had been already forewarned that to doctor a Bedouin,
even under the most favorable circumstances, or a camel, is pretty much
the same thing, and with about an equal chance of success or advantage.
I politely decline. He insists; I turn him off with a joke.
“‘So you laugh at us, O you inhabitants of towns. We are Bedouins, we do
not know your customs,’ replies he, in a whining tone; while the boys
grin unconscionably at the discomfiture of their tribesman.
“‘Ya woleyd,’ or young fellow (for so they style every human male from
eight to eighty without distinction), ‘will you not fill my pipe?’ says
one, who has observed that mine was not idle, and who, though well
provided with a good stock of dry tobacco tied up in a rag at his greasy
waist-belt, thinks the moment a fair opportunity for a little begging,
since neither medicine nor merchandise is to be had.
“But Salim, seated amid the circle, makes me a sign not to comply.
Accordingly, I evade the demand. However, my petitioner goes on begging,
and is imitated by two or three others, each of whom thrusts forward (a
true Irish hint) a bit of marrowbone with a hole drilled in one side to
act for a pipe, or a porous stone, not uncommon throughout the desert,
clumsily fashioned into a smoking apparatus, a sort of primitive
meerschaum.
“As they grow rude, I pretend to become angry, thus to cut the matter
short. ‘We are your guests, O you Bedouins; are you not ashamed to beg
of us?’ ‘Never mind, excuse us; those are ignorant fellows, ill-bred
clowns,’ etc., interposes one close by the chief’s side; and whose dress
is in somewhat better condition than that of the other half and
three-quarter naked individuals who complete the assembly.
“‘Will you not people the pipe for your little brother?’ subjoins the
chief himself, producing an empty one with a modest air. Bedouin
language, like that of most Orientals, abounds with not ungraceful
imagery, and accordingly, ‘people’ here means ‘fill.’ Salim gives me a
wink of compliance. I take out a handful of tobacco and put it on his
long shirt-sleeve, which he knots over it, and looks uncommonly well
pleased. At any rate they are easily satisfied, these Bedouins.
“The night air in these wilds is life and health itself. We sleep
soundly, unharassed by the anticipation of an early summons to march next
morning, for both men and beasts have alike need of a full day’s repose.
When the sun has risen we are invited to enter the chief’s tent and to
bring our baggage under its shelter. A main object of our entertainer,
in proposing this move, is to try whether he cannot render our visit some
way profitable to himself, by present or purchase. Whatever politeness
he can muster is accordingly brought into play, and a large bowl of fresh
camel’s milk, an excellent beverage, now appears on the stage. I leave
to chemical analysis to decide why this milk will not furnish butter, for
such is the fact, and content myself with bearing witness to its very
nutritious and agreeable qualities.
“The day passes on. About noon our host naturally enough supposes us
hungry, and accordingly a new dish is brought in: it looks much like a
bowl full of coarse red paste, or bran mixed with ochre. This is samh, a
main article of subsistence to the Bedouins of Northern Arabia.
Throughout this part of the desert grows a small herbaceous and tufted
plant, with juicy stalks and a little ovate yellow-tinted leaf; the
flowers are of a brighter yellow, with many stamens and pistils. When
the blossoms fall off there remains in place of each a four-leaved
capsule about the size of an ordinary pea, and this, when ripe, opens to
show a mass of minute reddish seeds, resembling grit in feel and
appearance, but farinaceous in substance. The ripening season is in
July, when old and young, men and women, all are out to collect the
unsown and untoiled-for harvest.
“On the 27th of the month we passed with some difficulty a series of
abrupt sand-hills that close in the direct course of Wady Sirhan. Here,
for the first time, we saw the ghada, a shrub almost characteristic, from
its very frequency, of the Arabian Peninsula, and often alluded to by its
poets. It is of the genus _Euphorbia_, with a woody stem, often five or
six feet in height, and innumerable round green twigs, very slender and
flexible, forming a large feathery tuft, not ungraceful to the eye, while
it affords some kind of shelter to the traveller and food to his camels.
These last are passionately fond of ghada, and will continually turn
right out of their way, in spite of blows and kicks, to crop a mouthful
of it, and then swing back their long necks into the former direction,
ready to repeat the same manœuvre at the next bush, as though they had
never received a beating for their past voracity.
“I have, while in England, heard and read more than once of the ‘docile
camel.’ If ‘docile’ means stupid, well and good; in such a case the
camel is the very model of docility. But if the epithet is intended to
designate an animal that takes an interest in its rider so far as a beast
can, that in some way understands his intentions or shares them in a
subordinate fashion, that obeys from a sort of submissive or half
fellow-feeling with his master, like the horse and elephant, then I say
that the camel is by no means docile, very much the contrary; he takes no
heed of his rider, pays no attention whether he be on his back or not,
walks straight on when once set a-going, merely because he is too stupid
to turn aside; and then, should some tempting thorn or green branch
allure him out of the path, continues to walk on in this new direction
simply because he is too dull to turn back into the right road. His only
care is to cross as much pasture as he conveniently can while pacing
mechanically onward; and for effecting this, his long, flexible neck sets
him at great advantage, and a hard blow or a downright kick alone has any
influence on him whether to direct or impel. He will never attempt to
throw you off his back, such a trick being far beyond his limited
comprehension; but if you fall off, he will never dream of stopping for
you, and walks on just the same, grazing while he goes, without knowing
or caring an atom what has become of you. If turned loose, it is a
thousand to one that he will never find his way back to his accustomed
home or pasture, and the first comer who picks him up will have no
particular shyness to get over; Jack or Tom is all the same to him, and
the loss of his old master, and of his own kith and kin, gives him no
regret, and occasions no endeavor to find them again.”
On coming in sight of the mountains of Djowf the travellers were obliged
to halt for two days at an encampment of the Sherarat Arabs, because
Salim could not enter the Djowf with them in person, on account of a
murder which he had committed there. He was therefore obliged to procure
them another guide capable of conducting them safely the remainder of the
journey. After much search and discussion, Salim ended by finding a
good-natured, but somewhat timid, individual, who undertook their
guidance to the Djowf.
Journeying one whole day and night over an open plateau, where they saw a
large troop of ostriches, they mounted again on the 30th, by the light of
the morning star, anxious to enter the Djowf before the intense heat of
noon should come on; “but we had yet a long way to go, and our track
followed endless windings among low hills and stony ledges, without any
symptom of approach to cultivated regions. At last the slopes grew
greener, and a small knot of houses, with traces of tillage close by,
appeared. It was the little village of Djoon, the most westerly
appendage of Djowf itself. I counted between twenty and thirty houses.
We next entered a long and narrow pass, whose precipitous banks shut in
the view on either side. Suddenly several horsemen appeared on the
opposite cliff, and one of them, a handsome youth, with long, curling
hair, well armed and well mounted (we shall make his more special
acquaintance in the next chapter), called out to our guide to halt, and
answer in his own behalf and ours. This Suleyman did, not without those
marks of timidity in his voice and gesture which a Bedouin seldom fails
to show on his approach to a town, for, when once in it, he is apt to
sneak about much like a dog who has just received a beating for theft.
On his answer, delivered in a most submissive tone, the horsemen held a
brief consultation, and we then saw two of them turn their horses’ heads
and gallop off in the direction of the Djowf, while our original
interlocutor called out to Suleyman, ‘All right, go on, and fear
nothing,’ and then disappeared after the rest of the band behind the
verge of the upland.
“We had yet to drag on for an hour of tedious march; my camel fairly
broke down, and fell again and again; his bad example was followed by the
coffee-laden beast; the heat was terrible in these gorges, and noon was
approaching. At last we cleared the pass, but found the onward prospect
still shut out by an intervening mass of rocks. The water in our skins
was spent, and we had eaten nothing that morning. When shall we get in
sight of the Djowf? or has it flown away from before us? While thus
wearily laboring on our way we turned a huge pile of crags, and a new and
beautiful scene burst upon our view.
[Picture: An Arab Chief]
“A broad, deep valley, descending ledge after ledge till its innermost
depths are hidden from sight amid far-reaching shelves of reddish rock,
below everywhere studded with tufts of palm-groves and clustering
fruit-trees, in dark-green patches, down to the furthest end of its
windings; a large brown mass of irregular masonry crowning a central
hill; beyond, a tall and solitary tower overlooking the opposite bank of
the hollow, and further down small round turrets and flat house-tops,
half buried amid the garden foliage, the whole plunged in a perpendicular
flood of light and heat; such was the first aspect of the Djowf as we now
approached it from the west. It was a lovely scene, and seemed yet more
so to our eyes, weary of the long desolation through which we had, with
hardly an exception, journeyed day after day, since our last farewell
glimpse of Gaza and Palestine, up to the first entrance on inhabited
Arabia. ‘Like the Paradise of eternity, none can enter it till after
having previously passed over hell-bridge,’ says an Arab poet, describing
some similar locality in Algerian lands.
“Reanimated by the view, we pushed on our jaded beasts, and were already
descending the first craggy slope of the valley when two horsemen, well
dressed and fully armed after the fashion of these parts, came up toward
us from the town, and at once saluted us with a loud and hearty
‘Marhaba,’ or ‘welcome;’ and without further preface they added, ‘Alight
and eat,’ giving themselves the example of the former by descending
briskly from their light-limbed horses and untying a large leather bag
full of excellent dates and a water-skin filled from the running spring;
then, spreading out these most opportune refreshments on the rock, and
adding, ‘we were sure that you must be hungry and thirsty, so we have
come ready provided,’ they invited us once more to sit down and begin.”