I Suppose This Is The "After-Glow" Described
By Miss Martineau And Other Travellers:
"Flashes of light like
coruscations of the Aurora Borealis in pyramidal form" would exactly
describe the phenomenon.
It varies, however, greatly, and often for
some days together is scarcely visible.
[FN#3] Niebuhr considers that the stars are brighter in Norway than in
the Arabian deserts; I never saw them so bright as on the Neilgherry
hills.
[FN#4] Written in the days of the vans, which preceded the Railway.
[FN#5] On one occasion I was obliged personally to exert myself to
prevent a party of ladies being thrust into an old and bad transit-van;
the ruder sex having stationed itself at some distance from the
starting-place in order to seize upon the best.
[FN#6] Abraham, for breaking his father's idols, was cast by Nimrod
into a fiery furnace, which forthwith became a garden of roses. (See
Chapter xxi. of the Koran, called "the Prophets.")
[FN#7] David worked as an armourer, but the steel was as wax in his
hands.
[FN#8] Solomon reigned over the three orders of created beings: the
fable of his flying carpet is well known. (See Chapter xxvii. of the
Koran, called "the Ant.")
[FN#9] These are mystic words, and entirely beyond the reach of
dictionaries and vocabularies.
[FN#10] In Moresby's Survey, "Sherm Demerah," the creek of Demerah. Ali
Bey calls it Demeg.
[FN#11] See "The Land of Midian (Revisited)" for a plan of
Al-Dumayghah, and a description of Al-Wijh (al-Bahr) These men of the
Beni Jahaynah, or "Juhaynah" tribe-the "Beni Kalb," as they are also
called,-must not be trusted. They extend from the plains north of
Yambu' into the Sinaitic Peninsula. They boast no connection with the
great tribe Al-Harb; but they are of noble race, are celebrated for
fighting, and, it is said, have good horses. The specimens we saw at
Marsa Dumayghah were poor ones, they had few clothes, and no arms
except the usual Jambiyah (crooked dagger). By their civility and their
cringing style of address it was easy to see they had been corrupted by
intercourse with strangers.
[FN#12] It is written Wish and Wejh; by Ali Bey Vadjeh and Wadjih;
Wodjeh and Wosh by Burckhardt; and Wedge by Moresby.
[FN#13] The terrible Afghan knife.
[FN#14] These the Arabs, in the vulgar tongue, call Jarad al-Bahr, "sea
locusts"; as they term the shrimp Burghut al-Bahr, or the sea-flea.
Such compound words, palpably derived from land objects, prove the
present Ichthyophagi and the Badawin living on the coast to be a race
originally from the interior. Pure and ancient Arabs still have at
least one uncompounded word to express every object familiar to them,
and it is in this point that the genius of the language chiefly shows
itself.
[FN#15] The Arab superstition is, that these flashes of light are
jewels made to adorn the necks and hair of the mermaids and mermen.
When removed from their native elements the gems fade and disappear.
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