Lady Anne Blunt

“ Last night our track went a good deal up and down, crossing small ravines and watercourses, and pools and ditches full of water. Sometimes we waded through tall grass, splendid stuff, growing quite wild and uncared for. The moon serves us hardly at all, but we could see dimly by starlight. The constellation of the Scorpion is now our guide, rising as it does in the south-east. I have slept little lately, and once last night I fell fast asleep on horseback, and woke with a start at a sound of munching. It was my mare grazing eagerly knee-deep in wild oats. ”

“ The town itself is irregularly built, and has no continuous wall round its gardens. There are many detached gardens and groups of houses, and these have not been ruined as those of Jôf have been by recent wars. Altogether, it has an exceedingly flourishing look, not an acre of irrigable land left unplanted. Everything is neat and clean, the walls fresh battlemented, and every house trim as if newly built. The little square plots of barley are surrounded each by its hedge of wattled palm branches, and the streets and lanes are scrupulously tidy. ”

“ The Tibb is much swollen, and flowing through a deep cutting, looks anything but easy to cross,—a turbid yellow river cutting its way through the alluvial plain without valley of any sort, so that you do not know it is there until you come close to it. It is about fifty yards wide.
At the door of the mudíf we alighted, and presently made the acquaintance of our host—not Mizban, for he, as we heard before, is away at Amara, but his son Beneyeh—a rather handsome but not quite agreeable looking youth, whose forward, almost rude manners show him to be, what he no doubt is, a spoilt child. ”

“ Near Kurághir we saw some gazelles and coursed them vainly. It is vexatious, for I have forgotten to bring meat, and unless we can catch or shoot something, we shall have none till we get to Jôf. I ought to have thought of it, for, though provisions are by no means plentiful at Itheri, we could probably have bought a sheep and driven it on with us. The pain of my lameness distracted my attention—a bad excuse, but the only one. I suffer less when riding than at any other time.
We are now, since four o’clock, camped on the sand under some ghada bushes, and the wind has dropped for the moment. ”

“ For a while, too, we flattered ourselves with the idea that Ghafil was to be our only company, and for a mile or two the illusion lasted, and we were reassured. There is something, besides, in a very bright morning’s march through a beautiful country, for we were close to the hills, which prevents one feeling anxious, and whatever its inhabitants may be, this frontier-land of Persia looks like a Garden of Eden, with its grass and flowers knee deep in every hollow. ”

“ The outline of Jebel Shammar is strangely fantastic, running up into spires and domes and pinnacles, with here and there a loop-hole through which you can see the sky, or a wonderful boulder perched like a rocking stone on the sky line. One rock was in shape just like a camel, and would deceive any person who did not know that a camel could not have climbed up there. ”

“ Suddenly we came to the edge of the Nefûd, and there, a few hundred yards from the foot of the last sand-bank, we saw the falcon and the greyhounds all sitting in a circle on the ground, watching a large hole into which the hare had just bolted. The four pursuers looked so puzzled and foolish, that in spite of the annoyance of losing the game, we could not help laughing. Hares in the desert always go to ground. ”

“ We left our camels to follow, and rode on towards the hills. It still took us several hours to reach them, but we were by three o’clock touching the stones with our hands to feel that they were real. It was as if we had been lost at sea and had found a desert island.
We had some time to wait while the caravan laboured slowly on to join us. I remained with the mares and kept a look-out while Wilfrid climbed to the top of the smaller rock. “What a place to be buried in,” he exclaimed. “Mount Nebo must have been like this.” But people who die in the Nefûd have seldom anyone to bury them. ”

“ There is a little tank, and a row of stunted palm-trees, where rollers, green and blue birds like jays, sit, while swifts dart about catching mosquitoes and flies, only a few hundred, alas, out of the millions that torment us. For there is no rose without a thorn, nor is this lovely kiosk and garden full of blooming poppies without its plague. The flies and mosquitoes are maddening, and to-day the heat of summer has burst upon us. ”

“ Ibn Smeyr had besides a little intrigue on foot respecting the escort of the Damascus pilgrims, which he in part provided or hoped to provide. Abd el-Kader was his friend, and it was at the Emir’s house that he alighted and that we found him. Mohammed Dukhi, noble though he is in point of blood, is not a fine specimen of a great Bedouin Sheykh. His politeness is overstrained and unnatural, reminding one rather of city than of desert manners; there are also ugly stories of his want of faith, which one finds no difficulty in believing when one sees him. ”

“ In the last six days we have marched a hundred and seventy miles, the greater part of the Haj on foot, and almost fasting. What would an English army say to that? Yet not one of the men—nor even of the poor women—who have had to trudge along thus, has been left behind. For ourselves we have had no extra fatigue, for the change from camel-back to horse-back and back again is of itself a rest. Khrer, my delúl, has very even paces, so that one is not soon tired riding him. ”

“ Wherever a well has been sunk, a little garden has been made, fenced in with a wall, and planted with palms. There are perhaps a dozen of these outlying farms occupying two or three acres each. In one place there are four or five houses with their gardens together, which have the look of a village. The whole of the basin, except these oases, is dazzlingly white, showing the palm groves as black patches on its surface. ”

“ The future has only delusions in store for them. It is idle to quote the precedent of those American railways, carried through waste places, which have speedily attracted population, and through population, wealth. In Asia there is no surplus population anywhere to attract. Moreover there are existing circumstances of misgovernment, which no system of railways can cure, and till these are changed, it is idle to hope for other changes. Railways in Europe or in America, serve the interests of the people. In Turkey or in Persia they would serve the interests of their rulers only. ”

“ Mubarek, the Emir’s chief slave, was one of our particular acquaintances. He inhabits a very handsome house, as houses go in Haïl; and there Wilfrid paid him more than one visit. His house is curiously decorated with designs in plaster of birds and beasts—ostriches, antelopes, and camels. Though a slave, Mubarek has not in appearance the least trace of negro blood; and it is still a mystery to us how he happens to be one. He is a well-bred person, and has done everything in his power to make things pleasant for us. ”

“ Abeyeh argued in vain; if there had been legions of robbers in sight, I don’t think Wilfrid would have moved. He was indeed unfit to stir, and has been lying on the ground under the shade of the tent ever since. A halt like this is not much of a rest; the heat is too overpowering, the flies too troublesome. Beyond the rocky range we see high snow peaks, very tantalising in this furnace, and looking the other way, there is just below us a fine piece of meadow land on the banks of a running stream. In all the hollows there is rich pasture. ”

“ It is remarkable how much more prosperous the land looks as soon as one gets away from Turkish administration. The sun was setting as we first caught sight of Melakh, another strange old mediæval town of black stone, with walls and towers much out of the perpendicular; so leaving the camels to come on under Abdallah’s charge and that of a man who had volunteered to guide us, we cantered on with Mohammed, and in the twilight arrived at the house of Huseyn el-Atrash. ”

“ This mare had been often asked about both for Ibn Rashid, and for Nassr el-Ashgar, Sheykh of the Montefyk, who (or rather his brother Fahad now) has the best collection of horses after Ibn Rashid and Ibn Saoud. She is a fine bright bay, muttlak-el-yemin, snip on the nose; has a splendid way of moving when ridden, action like Hamúd’s mare at Haïl, handsome rather than racing. The head is good, the eye bright and large, the forehead rather flat, the jowl deep; the wither high and back short, quarters round, like all the Nejd horses, sinews good, and hoofs large and round. ”

“ In the town, on the other hand, the Bedouin prince, despotic though he may be, is still under close restraint from public opinion. The citizens of Jebel Shammar have not what we should call constitutional rights; there is no machinery among them for the assertion of their power; but there is probably no community in the old world, where popular feeling exercises a more powerful influence on government than it does at Haïl. The Emir, irresponsible as he is in individual acts, knows well that he cannot transgress the traditional unwritten law of Arabia with impunity. ”

“ Ghafil is another and a worse edition of Dakher, having, over and above his brother’s vices of countenance, a most abominable squint. His face looks always like a thunder-cloud, and the smiles on it, (for he smiles sometimes, showing a wonderful set of white teeth from ear to ear) are like the smiles of a wild beast. ”