He Begged Me To Lend Him Twenty Dollars, Which He Promised To
Repay Me At Cairo, As He Wished To Buy Some Sheep To Be Killed On The
Following Day In Honour Of The Saint Sheikh Szaleh.
I told him that I
never lent money to any body, but would willingly have made him a
present of the sum if I had possessed it.
He then said in many words,
that if it had not been for his interference, the Bedouins would have
waylaid and
[p.595] killed me in returning from Djebel Katerin. I told him that he
and his tribe would have been responsible to the Pasha of Egypt for such
an act; and in short that I never paid any tribute in the Pasha’s
dominions. It ended by my giving him a few pounds of coffeebeans,
wrapped up in a good handkerchief, a few squares of soap, and a loaf of
sugar, to present to his women, and thus we parted good friends. In the
evening his brother came and also received a few trifles. He had brought
a fat sheep to kill in honour of El Khoudher (St. George), a saint of
the first class among Bedouins, and to whose intercession he thought
himself indebted for the recovery of the health of his young wife. In
the convent, adjoining to the outer wall, is a chapel dedicated to St.
George; the Bedouins, who are not permitted to enter the convent,
address their vows and prayers to him on the outside, just below the
chapel. I was invited to partake of the repast prepared by the brother
of Sheikh Hassan, and much against the advice of the monks, I let myself
down the rope from the window, and sat below for several hours with the
Arabs.
I was invited also to the great feast of Sheikh Szaleh, in Wady Szaleh,
which was to take place on the morrow, but as I knew that Szaleh, the
great chief of the Towara, was to be there, and would no doubt press me
hardly by his inquiries why I had come without the Pasha’s Firmahn; and
as the Arabs were greatly exasperated against me for my late excursion
to Om Shomar in addition to other causes of displeasure, I thought it
very probable that I might be insulted amongst them, and I therefore
determined to seize the opportunity of this general assembly in Wady
Szaleh to begin my journey to Cairo; by so doing, I should also escape
the disagreeable necessity of having Bedouin guides forced upon me. I
engaged Hamd and his brother with two camels, and left the convent
before dawn on the 30th, after having taken a farewell
NAKB EL RAHA
[p.596] of the monks, and especially of the worthy Ikonómos, who
presented me at parting with a leopard’s skin, which he had lately
bought of the Bedouins; together with several fine specimens of rock
crystals, and a few small pieces of native cinnabar [Arabic]. The
crystals are collected by the Arabs in one of the mountains not far
distant from the convent, but in which of them I did not learn; I have
seen some six inches in length, and one and a half in breadth; the
greater part are of a smoky colour, with pyramidal tops. The cinnabar is
said, by the Bedouins, to be found in great quantities upon Djebel
Sheyger [Arabic], a few hours to the N.E. of Wady Osh, the valley in
which I slept, at an Arab encampment, two nights before I arrived at the
convent from Suez.
May 30th.—We issued from the narrow valley in which the convent stands,
into a broader one, or rather a plain, called El Raha, leaving on our
right the road by which I first reached the convent. We continued in El
Raha N.N.W. for an hour and an half, when we came to an ascent called
Nakb el Raha [Arabic], the top of which we reached in two hours from the
convent. I had chosen this route, which is the most southern from the
convent to Suez, in order to see Wady Feiran, and to ascend from thence
the mountain Serbal, which, with Mount Saint Catherine and Shomar, is
the highest peak in the peninsula. I had mentioned my intention to Hamd,
who it appears communicated it this morning to his brother, for the
latter left us abruptly at Nakb el Raha, saying that he had forgot his
gun, giving his camel in charge to Hamd, and promising to join us lower
down, as his tent was not far distant. Instead, however, of going home,
he ran straight to the Arabs assembled at Sheikh Szaleh, and acquainted
them with my designs. Their chiefs immediately dispatched a messenger to
Feiran to enjoin the people there to prevent me from ascending Serbal;
but,
WADY SOLAF
[p.597] fortunately, I was already on my way to the mountain when the
messenger reached Feiran, and on my return I had only to encounter the
clamorous and now fruitless expostulations of the Arabs at that place.
We began to descend from the top of Nakb el Raha, by a narrow chasm, the
bed of a winter torrent; direction N.W. by N. At the end of two hours
and a quarter we halted near a spring called Kanaytar [Arabic]. Upon
several blocks near it I saw inscriptions in the same character as those
which I had before seen, but they were so much effaced as to be no
longer legible. I believe it was in these parts that Niebuhr copied the
inscriptions given in plate 49 of his Voyage. From the spring the
descent was steep; in many parts I found the road paved, which must have
been a work of considerable labour, and I was told that it had been done
in former times at the expense of the convent. This road is the only one
passable for camels, with the exception of the defile in which is the
seat of Moses, in the way from the upper Sinai towards Suez.
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