That trait was enough. The others mounted,
and left us quietly to sleep.
I have been diffuse in relating this little adventure, which is
characteristic, showing what bravado can do in Arabia. It also suggests
a lesson, which every traveller in these regions should take well to
heart. The people are always ready to terrify him with frightful
stories, which are the merest phantoms of cowardice. The reason why the
Egyptian displayed so much philanthropy was that, had one of the party
been lost, the survivors might have fallen into trouble. But in this
place, we were, I believe,—despite the declarations of our companions
that it was infested with Turpins and Fra Diavolos,—as safe as in Meccah.
Every night, during the pilgrimage season, a troop of about fifty
horsemen patrol the roads; we were all armed to the teeth, and our
party looked too formidable to be “cruelly beaten by a single footpad.” Our
nap concluded, we remounted, and resumed the weary way down a sandy
valley, in which the poor donkeys sank fetlock-deep. At dawn we found
our companions halted, and praying at the Kahwat Turki, another little
coffee-house. Here an exchange of what is popularly called “chaff” took
place. “Well,” cried the Egyptian, “what have ye gained by halting? We have
been quiet here, praying and smoking for the last hour!” “Go, eat thy
buried beans,[FN#5]” we replied. “What does an Egyptian boor know of
manliness!” The surly donkey-boy was worked up into a paroxysm of passion
by such small jokes as telling him to convey our salams to the Governor
of Jeddah, and by calling the asses after the name of his tribe. He
replied by “foul, unmannered, scurril taunts,” which only drew forth fresh
derision, and the coffee-house keeper laughed consumedly,
[p.265] having probably seldom entertained such “funny gentlemen.”
Shortly after leaving the Kahwat Turki we found the last spur of the
highlands that sink into the Jeddah Plain. This view would for some
time be my last of
“Infamous hills, and sandy, perilous wilds;”
and I contemplated it with the pleasure of one escaping from it. Before
us lay the usual iron flat of these regions, whitish with salt, and
tawny with stones and gravel; but relieved and beautified by the
distant white walls, whose canopy was the lovely blue sea. Not a tree,
not a patch of verdure was in sight ; nothing distracted our attention
from the sheet of turquoises in the distance. Merrily the little
donkeys hobbled on, in spite of their fatigue. Soon we distinguished
the features of the town, the minarets, the fortifications—so celebrated
since their honeycombed guns beat off in 1817 the thousands of Abdullah
bin Sa’ud, the Wahhabi,[FN#6] and a small dome outside the walls.
The sun began to glow fiercely, and we were not sorry when, at about
eight A.M., after passing through the mass of hovels and coffee-houses,
cemeteries and sand-hills, which forms the eastern approach to Jeddah,
we entered the fortified Bab Makkah. Allowing eleven hours for our
actual march,—we halted about three,—those wonderful donkeys had
accomplished between forty-four
[p.266] and forty-six miles,[FN#7] generally in deep sand, in one
night. And they passed the archway of Jeddah cantering almost as nimbly
as when they left Meccah.
Shaykh Nur had been ordered to take rooms for me in a vast pile of
madrepore—unfossilized coral, a recent formation,—once the palace of
Mohammed bin Aun, and now converted into a Wakalah. Instead of so
doing, Indian-like, he had made a gipsy encampment in the square
opening upon the harbour. After administering the requisite correction,
I found a room that would suit me. In less than an hour it was swept,
sprinkled with water, spread with mats, and made as comfortable as its
capability admitted. At Jeddah I felt once more at home. The sight of
the sea acted as a tonic. The Maharattas were not far wrong when they
kept their English captives out of reach of the ocean, declaring that
we were an amphibious race, to whom the wave is a home.
After a day’s repose at the Caravanserai, the camel-man and donkey-boy
clamouring for money, and I not having more than tenpence of borrowed
coin, it was necessary to cash at the British Vice-Consulate a draft
given to me by the Royal Geographical Society. With some trouble I saw
Mr. Cole, who, suffering from fever, was declared to be “not at home.” His
dragoman did by no means admire my looks; in fact, the general voice of
the household was against me. After some fruitless messages, I sent up
a scrawl to Mr. Cole, who decided upon admitting the importunate
Afghan. An exclamation of astonishment and a hospitable welcome
followed my self-introduction as an officer of the Indian army. Amongst
other things, the Vice-Consul informed me that, in divers discussions
with the Turks about the possibility of an Englishman finding his way
en cachette to Meccah,
[p.267] he had asserted that his compatriots could do everything, even
pilgrim to the Holy City. The Moslems politely assented to the first,
but denied the second part of the proposition. Mr. Cole promised
himself a laugh at the Turks’ beards; but since my departure, he wrote to
me that the subject made the owners look so serious, that he did not
like recurring to it.
Truly gratifying to the pride of an Englishman was our high official
position assumed and maintained at Jeddah. Mr. Cole had never, like his
colleague at Cairo, lowered himself in the estimation of the proud race
with which he has to deal, by private or mercantile transactions with
the authorities. He has steadily withstood the wrath of the Meccan
Sharif, and taught him to respect the British name.
