For My Own Part, Being Convinced That The Hospitality
Of The Bedouin Is Afforded With Disinterested Cordiality, I Was In
General Averse To Making The Slightest Return.
Few travellers perhaps
will agree with me on this head; but will treat the Bedouins in the same
manner as the Turks, and other inhabitants of the towns, who never
proffer their services or
WADY EL SHEIKH
[p.487] hospitality without expecting a reward; the feelings of
Bedouins, however, are very different from those of townsmen, and a
Bedouin will praise the guest who departs from him without making any
other remuneration than that of bestowing a blessing upon them and their
encampment, much more than him who thinks to redeem all obligations by
payment.
We returned from Wady Osh towards Wady Berah; but leaving the latter,
which here takes a direction towards Wady Feiran, we ascended by a
narrow valley called Wady Akhdhar [Arabic]. Here I again saw some
inscriptions on blocks of stone lying by the road side. A few hours to
the N.E. of Wady Osh is a mountain called Sheyger, where native cinnabar
is collected; it is called Rasokht [Arabic] by the Arabs, and is usually
found in small pieces about the size of a pigeon’s egg. It is very
seldom crystallized; but there are sometimes nodules on the surface; it
stains the fingers of a dark colour, and its fracture is in
perpendicular fibres. I did not hear that the Arabs traded at all in
this metal.
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