[p.363] objection to paying so much was, that it would become known at
Kerek, which, besides other difficulties it might bring me into, would
have obliged me to pay all my future guides in the same proportion. My
landlord, however, removed this objection by making the guide take a
solemn oath that he would never confess to having received more than six
piastres for his trouble. There was no other proper guide to be got, and
I began to be tired of Szalt, for I saw that my landlord was very
earnest in his endeavours to get me away; I resolved therefore to trust
to my good fortune, and to set out with no other company than that of an
armed horseman. In the evening I returned to Feheis, from whence we
departed early the next morning.
July 13th.We passed Ardh el Hemar, in the neighbourhood of which are
the ruined places El Ryhha (Arabic), Shakour (Arabic), Meghanny
(Arabic), and Mekabbely (Arabic); and at a short distance farther on in
the wood, we met two men quite naked. Whenever the Bedouins meet any
other Arabs in the desert, of inferior force, and who are unknown to
them, they level their lances, and stop their horses within about ten
yards of the strangers, to enquire whether they are friends or not. My
guide had seen the two men at a great distance among the trees; be
called to me to get my gun ready, and we galloped towards them; but they
no sooner saw us than they stopped, and cried out, We are under your
protection! They then told us that they were peasants of a village near
Rieha or Jericho; that they had been carried away from their own fields
by a party of Beni Szakher, with whom their village happened to be at
war, as far as Yadjoush, where the latter had encampments; that after
being required to pay the price of blood of one of the tribe slain by
the inhabitants of their village, they had been beaten, and stripped
naked; but that at last they had found means to escape. Their bruises
and sores bore testimony