I Believe It To Be A Mere Corruption Of The Arabic Wady [Arabic Text] Or Wah.

Nothing can be more incorrect than the vulgar idea of an Arabian Oasis, except it be the popular conception of an Arabian Desert.

One reads of "isles of the sandy sea," but one never sees them. The real "Wady" is, generally speaking, a rocky valley bisected by the bed of a mountain torrent, dry during the hot season. In such places the Badawin love to encamp, because they find food and drink,-water being always procurable by digging. When the supply is perennial, the Wady becomes the site of a village. The Desert is as unaptly compared to a "sandy sea." Most of the wilds of Arabia resemble the tract between Suez and Cairo; only the former are of primary formation, whereas the others are of a later date. Sand-heaps are found in every Desert, but sand-plains are a local feature, not the general face of the country. The Wilderness, east of the Nile, is mostly a hard dry earth, which requires only a monsoon to become highly productive: even where silicious sand covers the plain, the waters of a torrent, depositing humus or vegetable mould, bind the particles together, and fit it for the reception of seed. [FN#16] The intelligent reader will easily understand that I am speaking of the Desert in the temperate season, not during the summer heats, when the whole is one vast furnace, nor in winter, when the Sarsar wind cuts like an Italian Tramontana. [FN#17] This, as a general rule in Al-Islam, is a sign that the Maghrib or evening prayer must not be delayed. The Shafe'i school performs its devotions immediately after the sun has disappeared. [FN#18] This salutation of peace is so differently pronounced by every Eastern nation that the observing traveller will easily make of it a shibboleth. [FN#19] To "nakh" in vulgar, as in classical, Arabic is to gurgle "Ikh! ikh!" in the bottom of one's throat till the camel kneels down. We have no English word for this proceeding; but Anglo-Oriental travellers are rapidly naturalising the "nakh."

[FN#20] There are many qualifications necessary for an Imam-a leader of prayer; the first condition, of course, is orthodoxy. [FN#21] "The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night," (Psalm cxxi. 6). Easterns still believe firmly in the evil effects of moonlight upon the human frame,-from Sind to Abyssinia, the traveller will hear tales of wonder concerning it. [FN#22] The Dum i Gurg, or wolf's tail, is the Persian name for the first brushes of grey light which appear as forerunners of dawn. [FN#23] Dar al-Bayda is a palace belonging to H.H. Abbas Pasha. This "white house" was formerly called the "red house," I believe from the colour of its windows,-but the name was changed, as being not particularly good-omened. [FN#24] The Tetrao Kata or sand-grouse, (Pterocles melanogaster; in Sind called the rock pigeon), is a fast-flying bird, not unlike a grey partridge whilst upon the wing.

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