Early One Saturday Morning, I Started For Kuba With A Motley Crowd Of
Devotees.
Shaykh Hamid, my Muzawwir, was by my side, mounted upon an
ass more miserable than I had yet seen.
The boy Mohammed had procured
for me a Meccan dromedary, with splendid trappings, a saddle with
burnished metal peaks before and behind, covered with a huge sheepskin
died crimson, and girthed over fine saddle-bags, whose enormous tassels
hung almost to the ground. The youth himself, being too grand to ride a
donkey, and unable to borrow a horse, preferred walking. He was proud
as a peacock, being habited in a style somewhat resembling the plume of
that gorgeous bird, in the coat of many colours-yellow, red, and golden
flowers, apparently sewed on a field of bright green silk-which cost me
so dear in the Harim. He was armed, as indeed all of us were, in
readiness for the Badawin, and he anxiously awaited opportunities of
discharging his pistol. Our course lay from Shaykh Hamid's house in the
Manakhah, along and up the
[p.399]Fiumara, "Al-Sayh," and through the Bab Kuba, a little gate in
the suburb wall, where, by-the-bye, my mounted companion was nearly
trampled down by a rush of half-wild camels. Outside the town, in this
direction, Southward, is a plain of clay, mixed with chalk, and here
and there with sand, whence protrude blocks and little ridges of
basalt. As far as Kuba, and the Harrah ridge to the West, the earth is
sweet and makes excellent gugglets.[FN#1] Immediately outside the gate
I saw a kiln, where they were burning tolerable bricks.
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