During The Next Season The Harb Were
Paralysed By The Blow, But In The Third Year They Levied 80,000 Men,
Attacked The Caravan, Pillaged It, And Slew Every Turk That Fell Into
Their Hands.
[P.264]CHAPTER XIV.
FROM BIR ABBAS TO AL-MADINAH.
THE 22nd July was a grand trial of temper to our little party. The
position of Bir Abbas exactly resembles that of Al-Hamra, except that
the bulge of the hill-girt Fiumara is at this place about two miles
wide. There are the usual stone-forts and palm-leaved hovels for the
troopers, stationed here to hold the place and to escort travellers,
with a coffee-shed, and a hut or two, called a bazar, but no village.
Our encamping ground was a bed of loose sand, with which the violent
Samum filled the air; not a tree or a bush was in sight; a species of
hardy locust and swarms of flies were the only remnants of animal life:
the scene was a caricature of Sind. Although we were now some hundred
feet, to judge by the water-shed, above the level of the sea, the
mid-day sun scorched even through the tent; our frail tenement was more
than once blown down, and the heat of the sand made the work of
repitching it painful. Again my companions, after breakfasting, hurried
to the coffee-house, and returned one after the other with dispiriting
reports. Then they either quarrelled desperately about nothing, or they
threw themselves on their rugs, pretending to sleep in very sulkiness.
The lady Maryam soundly rated her surly son for refusing to fill her
chibuk for the twelfth time that morning, with the usual religious
phrases, "Allah direct thee into the right way, O my son!"-meaning that
he was going to the bad, and "O my calamity, thy mother is a lone
woman, O Allah!"-equivalent to the
[p.265] European parental plaint about grey hairs being brought down in
sorrow to the grave.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 349 of 571
Words from 96383 to 96718
of 157964
