A Poor Woman With Two Goats Lived In The Valley
Quite Alone.
Among the Bedouins themselves the most perfect security
prevails in this district, which is interrupted only by the scandalous
behaviour of the Turkish soldiers who pass this way.
I knew these men
well from repeated experience, and therefore had declined joining their
party. When we continued our route towards evening, we met on the road
one of the Bedouin boys who served as camel-drivers to the party before
us. His camel, upon which one of the soldiers was mounted, had not been
able to keep up with the others, and its rider, furious at this delay,
had drawn his sabre, and cut the animal to make it move at a quicker
pace: when the boy remonstrated and seized the halter, he also received
a cut on the shoulder; and as he persisted in keeping his hold, the
ruffian discharged his gun at him; the boy then ran off, and waited for
our coming up. At a few miles' distance we heard from afar the soldier's
loud cursing, and found him walking behind the camel. As I expected an
affray, I had loaded my gun and pistols. When he saw me riding in front
of our people, he immediately ran towards me, and cried out to me in
Turkish to descend and to change camels with him. I laughed at him, and
told him in Arabic I was no fellah, to be addressed in that manner. In
the usual style of those soldiers, who think that every person who is
not a soldier must yield to their commands, he then turned towards my
slave and ordered him to alight, swearing
[p.434] that he would shoot one of us, if we did not obey.
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