I Have Seen Two Or
Three Muscular Figures, But Never A Fat Man.
The neck is sinewy, the
chest broad, the flank thin, and the stomach in-drawn; the legs, though
fleshless, are well made, especially when the knee and ankle are not
bowed by too early riding.
The shins do not bend cucumber-like to the
front as in the African race.[FN#11] The arms are thin, with muscles
like whipcords, and the hands and feet are, in point of size and
delicacy, a link between Europe and India. As in the Celt, the Arab
thumb is remarkably long, extending almost to the first joint of the
index,[FN#12] which, with its easy rotation, makes it a perfect
prehensile instrument: the palm also is fleshless, small-boned, and
[p.84] elastic. With his small active figure, it is not strange that
the wildest Badawi gait should be pleasing; he neither unfits himself
for walking, nor distorts his ankles by turning out his toes according
to the farcical rule of fashion, and his shoulders are not dressed like
a drill-sergeant’s, to throw all the weight of the body upon the heels.
Yet there is no slouch in his walk; it is light and springy, and errs
only in one point, sometimes becoming a strut.
Such is the Badawi, and such he has been for ages. The national type
has been preserved by systematic intermarriage. The wild men do not
refuse their daughters to a stranger, but the son-in-law would be
forced to settle among them, and this life, which has its charms for a
while, ends in becoming wearisome.
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