I Travelled During The Months Of July,
August, And September, And Yet Never Found Myself Inconvenienced By The
"Poison-Wind" Sufficiently To Make Me Tie My Kufiyah, Badawi-Fashion,
Across My Mouth.
At the same time I can believe that to an invalid it
would be trying, and that a man almost worn out by hunger and fatigue
would receive from it a coup de grace.
Niebuhr attributes the
extraordinary mortality of his companions, amongst other causes, to a
want of stimulants. Though these might doubtless be useful in the cold
weather, or in the mountains of Al-Yaman, for men habituated to them
from early youth, yet nothing, I believe, would be more fatal than
strong drink when travelling through the Desert in summer heat. The
common beverage should be water or lemonade; the strongest stimulants
coffee or tea. It is what the natives of the country do, and doubtless
it is wise to take their example. The Duke of Wellington's dictum about
the healthiness of India to an abstemious man does not require to be
quoted. Were it more generally followed, we should have less of
sun-stroke and sudden death in our Indian armies, when soldiers, fed
with beef and brandy, are called out to face the violent heat. At the
same time it must be remembered, that foul and stagnant water,
abounding in organic matter, is the cause of half the diarrhoea and
dysentry which prove so fatal to travellers in these regions. To the
water-drinker, therefore, a pocket-filter is indispensable.
[FN#2] Al-Shark, "the East," is the popular name in the Hijaz for the
Western region as far as Baghdad and Bassorah, especially Nijd.
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