To cover our retreat, and that
he had been obliged to run after the camels, which were frightened by
the firing; but the truth was, that his terrors deprived him of all
power of reflection, otherwise he must have known that the only course,
to be pursued in the desert, when suddenly attacked, is to fight for
life, as escape is almost impossible.
Having been foiled in my hopes of visiting Akaba, I now wished to follow
the shore of the gulf to the southward; but Szaleh would not hear of any
farther progress in that direction, and insisted upon
WADY DJEREIMELE
[p.517] my going back to the convent. I told him that his company had
been of too little use to me, to make me desirous of keeping him any
longer; he therefore returned, no doubt in great haste, by the same
route we had come, accompanied by the deaf man; I engaged Ayd to conduct
us along the coast, Hamd being very ignorant of this part of the
peninsula, where his tribe, the Oulad Sayd, never encamp.
The date trees of Noweyba belong to the tribe of Mezeine; here were
several huts built of stones and branches of the trees, in which the
owners live with their families during the date-harvest.
