The Arnaut
In His Rage Seized A Pole, Raised It, And Delivered A Blow Which Missed
The Camel-Man, But,
Which brought the striker headlong to the ground.
Mas’ud exclaimed, with shrieks of rage, “Have we come to this,
That every
old-woman Turk smites us?” Our party had the greatest trouble to quiet
the quarrel[l]ers. The Arab listened to us when we threatened him with
the Pasha. But the Arnaut, whose rage was “like red-hot steel,” would hear
nothing but our repeated declarations, that unless he behaved more like
a pilgrim, we should be compelled to leave him and his slave behind.
At four P.M. we left Al-Birkat, and travelled Eastwards over rolling
ground thickly wooded. There was a network of footpaths through the
thickets, and clouds obscured the moon; the consequence was inevitable
loss of way. About 2 A.M. we began ascending hills in a south-westerly
direction, and presently we fell into the bed of a large rock-girt
Fiumara, which runs from east to west. The sands were overgrown with
saline and salsolaceous plants; the Coloquintida, which, having no
support, spreads along the ground[FN#13]; the Senna, with its small
green leaf; the Rhazya stricta[FN#14]; and a large luxuriant variety of
the Asclepias gigantea,[FN#15] cottoned over with
[p.138] mist and dew. At 6 A.M. (Sept. 9th) we left the Fiumara, and,
turning to the West, we arrived about an hour afterwards at the
station.
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