[P.65] The Lowest Hobbled With Heavy Staves.

Then came the riders of asses, of camels, and of mules.

Respectable men, especially Arabs, were mounted on dromedaries, and the soldiers had horses: a led animal was saddled for every grandee, ready whenever he might wish to leave his litter. Women, children, and invalids of the poorer classes sat upon a “Haml Musattah,”—rugs and cloths spread over the two large boxes which form the camel’s load.[FN#10] Many occupied Shibriyahs; a few, Shugdufs, and only the wealthy and the noble rode in Takht-rawan (litters), carried by camels or mules.[FN#11] The morning beams fell brightly upon the glancing arms which surrounded the stripped Mahmil,[FN#12] and upon the scarlet and gilt conveyances of the grandees. Not the least beauty of the spectacle was its wondrous variety of detail: no man was dressed like his neighbour, no camel was caparisoned, no horse was

[p.66] clothed in uniform, as it were. And nothing stranger than the contrasts; a band of half-naked Takruri marching with the Pasha’s equipage, and long-capped, bearded Persians conversing with Tarbush’d and shaven Turks.

The plain even at an early hour reeked with vapours distilled by the fires of the Samum: about noon, however, the air became cloudy, and nothing of colour remained, save that milky white haze, dull, but glaring withal, which is the prevailing day-tint in these regions. At mid-day we reached a narrowing of the basin, where, from both sides, “Irk,” or low hills, stretch their last spurs into the plain. But after half a mile, it again widened to upwards of two miles. At two P.M. (Friday, Sept. 2), we turned towards the South-west, ascended stony ground, and found ourselves one hour afterwards in a desolate rocky flat, distant about twenty-four miles of unusually winding road from our last station. “Mahattah Ghurab,[FN#13]” or the Raven’s Station, lies 10° south-west from Ja al-Sharifah, in the irregular masses of hill on the frontier of Al-Hijaz, where the highlands of Nijd begin.

After pitching the tent, we prepared to recruit our supply of water; for Mas’ud warned me that his camels had not drunk for ninety hours, and that they would soon sink under the privation. The boy Mohammed, mounting a dromedary, set off with the Shaykh and many water-bags, giving me an opportunity of writing out my journal. They did not return home until after nightfall, a delay caused by many adventures. The wells are in a Fiumara, as usual, about two miles distant from the halting-place, and the soldiers, regular as well as irregular, occupied the water and exacted hard coin in exchange for it. The men are not to blame; they would die of starvation but for this resource. The boy Mohammed had been engaged in several quarrels; but after

[p.67] snapping his pistol at a Persian pilgrim’s head, he came forth triumphant with two skins of sweetish water, for which we paid ten piastres.

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