On All Sides Are Rocks And
Mountains Rough And Stony; So You Find Yourself In Another Of Those
Punch-Bowls Which The Arabs Seem To Consider Choice Sites For
Settlements.[FN#20] The Fiumara, Hereabouts Very Winding, Threads The
High Grounds All The Way Down From The Plateau Of Al-Madinah:
During
the rainy season it becomes a raging torrent, carrying westwards to the
Red Sea the drainage of a hundred hills.
Water of good quality is
readily found in it by digging a few feet below the surface at the
angles where the stream forms the deepest hollows, and in some places
the stony sides give out bubbling springs.[FN#21]
Al-Hamra itself is a collection of stunted houses or rather hovels,
made of unbaked brick and mud, roofed over with palm leaves, and
pierced with air-holes, which occasionally boast a bit of plank for a
shutter. It appears thickly populated in the parts where the walls are
standing, but, like all settlements in the Holy Land, Al-Hijaz,[FN#23]
it abounds in ruins. It is well supplied with provisions, which are
here cheaper than at Al-Madinah,-a circumstance that induced Sa'ad the
Demon to overload his hapless camel with a sack of wheat. In the
village are a few shops where grain, huge plantains, ready-made bread,
rice,
[p.255] clarified butter, and other edibles are to be purchased. Palm
orchards of considerable extent supply it with dates. The bazar is,
like the generality of such places in the villages of Eastern Arabia, a
long lane, here covered with matting, there open to the sun, and the
narrow streets-if they may be so called-are full of dust and glare.
Near the encamping ground of caravans is a fort for the officer
commanding a troop of Albanian cavalry, whose duty it is to defend the
village,[FN#24] to hold the country, and to escort merchant travellers.
The building consists of an outer wall of hewn stone, loopholed for
musketry, and surmounted by "Shararif," "remparts coquets," about as
useful against artillery as the sugar gallery round a Twelfth-cake.
Nothing would be easier than to take the place:
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