They Could Not,
I Think, Really Secure Themselves Against Any Serious Danger By
This Contrivance, For Though They Have Arms, They Are So Little
Accustomed To Use Them, And So Utterly Unorganised, That They Never
Could Make Good Their Resistance To Robbers Of The Slightest
Respectability.
It is not of the Bedouins that such travellers are
afraid, for the safe conduct granted by the chief
Of the ruling
tribe is never, I believe, violated, but it is said that there are
deserters and scamps of various sorts who hover about the skirts of
the Desert, particularly on the Cairo side, and are anxious to
succeed to the property of any poor devils whom they may find more
weak and defenceless than themselves.
These people from Cairo professed to be amazed at the ludicrous
disproportion between their numerical forces and mine. They could
not understand, and they wanted to know, by what strange privilege
it is that an Englishman with a brace of pistols and a couple of
servants rides safely across the Desert, whilst they, the natives
of the neighbouring cities, are forced to travel in troops, or
rather in herds. One of them got a few minutes of private
conversation with Dthemetri, and ventured to ask him anxiously
whether the English did not travel under the protection of evil
demons. I had previously known (from Methley, I think, who had
travelled in Persia) that this notion, so conducive to the safety
of our countrymen, is generally prevalent amongst Orientals.
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