These Badawi Maghrabis Merely Boiled It. [FN#16] The Azan Is Differently Pronounced, Though Similarly Worded By Every Orthodox Nation In Al-Islam. [FN#17] The Usual Way Of Kissing The Knee Is To Place The Finger Tips Upon It, And Then To Raise Them To The Mouth.

It is an action denoting great humility, and the condescending superior who is not an immediate master returns the compliment in the same way. [FN#18] The Maghrabi dialect is known to be the harshest and most guttural form of Arabic.

It owes this unenviable superiority to its frequency of "Sukun," or the quiescence of one or more consonants;-"K'lab," for instance, for "Kilab," and "'Msik" for "Amsik." Thus it is that vowels, the soft and liquid part of language, disappear, leaving in their place a barbarous sounding mass of consonants. [FN#19] Burckhardt mentions the Arab legend that the spirits of the drowned Egyptians may be seen moving at the bottom of the sea, and Finati adds that they are ever busy recruiting their numbers with shipwrecked mariners. [FN#20] I thus called upon a celebrated Sufi or mystic, whom many East-Indian Moslems reverence as the Arabs do their Prophet. In Appendix I the curious reader will find Abd al-Kadir again mentioned. [FN#21] Those people are descendants of Syrians and Greeks that fled from Candia, Scios, the Ionian Islands, and Palestine to escape the persecutions of the Turks. They now wear the Arab dress, and speak the language of the country, but they are easily to be distinguished from the Moslems by the expression of their countenances and sometimes by their blue eyes and light hair. There are also a few families calling themselves Jabaliyah, or mountaineers. Originally they were 100 households, sent by Justinian to serve the convent of St. Catherine, and to defend it against the Berbers. Sultan Kansuh al-Ghori, called by European writers Campson Gaury, the Mamluk King of Egypt, in A.D. 1501, admitted these people into the Moslem community on condition of their continuing the menial service they had afforded to the monks. [FN#22] Adam's forehead (says the Tarikh Tabari) brushed the skies, but this height being inconvenient, the Lord abridged it to 100 cubits. The Moslems firmly believe in Anakim. Josephus informs us that Moses was of "divine form and great tallness"; the Arabs specify his stature,-300 cubits. They have, moreover, found his grave in some parts of the country S.E, of the Dead Sea, and make cups of a kind of bitumen called "Moses' Stones." This people nescit ignorare-it will know everything. [FN#23] "Moses' Well." I have no argument except the untrustworthy traditions of the Badawin, either for or against this having been the identical well near which Moses sat when he fled from the face of Pharaoh to the land of Midian. One thing is certain, namely, that in this part of Arabia, as also at Aden, the wells are of a very ancient date.

[p.207]CHAPTER XI.

TO YAMBU'.

ON the 11th July, 1853, about dawn, we left Tur, after a pleasant halt, with the unpleasant certainty of not touching ground for thirty-six hours. I passed the time in steadfast contemplation of the web of my umbrella, and in making the following meteorological remarks.

Morning.-The air is mild and balmy as that of an Italian spring; thick mists roll down the valleys along the sea, and a haze like mother-o'-pearl crowns the headlands. The distant rocks show Titanic walls, lofty donjons, huge projecting bastions, and moats full of deep shade. At their base runs a sea of amethyst, and as earth receives the first touches of light, their summits, almost transparent, mingle with the jasper tints of the sky. Nothing can be more delicious than this hour. But as

"les plus belles choses Ont le pire destin,"

so lovely Morning soon fades. The sun bursts up from behind the main, a fierce enemy, a foe that will force every one to crouch before him. He dyes the sky orange, and the sea "incarnadine," where its violet surface is stained by his rays, and he mercilessly puts to flight the mists and haze and the little agate-coloured masses of cloud that were before floating in the firmament. The atmosphere is so clear that now and then a planet is visible. For the two

[p.208] hours following sunrise the rays are endurable; after that they become a fiery ordeal. The morning beams oppress you with a feeling of sickness; their steady glow, reflected by the glaring waters, blinds your eyes, blisters your skin, and parches your mouth: you now become a monomaniac; you do nothing but count the slow hours that must "minute by" before you can be relieved.[FN#1]

Midday.-The wind, reverberated by the glowing hills is like the blast of a lime-kiln. All colour melts away with the canescence from above. The sky is a dead milk-white, and the mirror-like sea so reflects the tint that you can scarcely distinguish the line of the horizon. After noon the wind sleeps upon the reeking shore; there is a deep stillness; the only sound heard is the melancholy flapping of the sail. Men are not so much sleeping as half-senseless; they feel as if a few more degrees of heat would be death.

Sunset.-The enemy sinks behind the deep cerulean sea, under a canopy of gigantic rainbow which covers half the face of heaven. Nearest to the horizon is an arch of tawny orange; above it another of the brightest gold, and based upon these a semi-circle of tender sea-green blends with a score of delicate gradations into the sapphire sky. Across the rainbow the sun throws its rays in the form of giant wheel-spokes tinged with a beautiful pink. The Eastern sky is mantled with a purple flush that picks out the forms of the hazy Desert and the sharp-cut Hills.

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