Richard Francis Burton

“ No pretext was too flimsy to shorten a march or to cause a halt—the northerners did the same, but with them we had a controlling power in the shape of Shaykh Furayj. And like the citizens, they hate our manner of travelling: they love to sit up and chat through half the night; and to rise before dawn is an abomination to them. ”

“ At 6.40 a.m. they struck to the south-east of the town, and passed the two brackish pits or wells, Bir el-Isma’íl and El–Sannúsi, which supply the poor of the port. Thence crossing the broad Wady el-Wijh, they reached, after a mile’s ride, Wady Melláhah, or “the salina.” It is an oval, measuring some eighteen hundred yards from north to south: the banks are padded with brown slush frosted white; which, in places, “bogs” the donkeys and admits men to the knee. Beyond it lie dazzling blocks of pure crystallized salt ”

“ Shaykh ‘Afnan and his tribe are now models of courtesy to strangers; and the traveller must devoutly wish that every Shaykh in Arabia could be subjected to the same discipline.
The Baliyy are a good study of an Arab tribe in the rough. The Huwaytát, for example, know their way to Suez and to Cairo; they have seen civilization; they have learned, after a fashion, the outlandish ways of the Frank, the Fellah, and the Turk-fellow. ”

“ Man-race, they lie like the “childish-foolish,” deceiving nobody but themselves. An instance: Hours and miles are of course unknown to them, but they began with us by affecting an extreme ignorance of comparative distances; they could not, or rather they would not, adopt as a standard the two short hours’ march between the Port and the inland Fort of El–Wijh. ”

“ The loose sand is everywhere strewed with bits of light porous lava, which comes from the Harrat el-Buhayr, a bluff quoin to the north-west. About El–Haurá, I have said, the volcanic formations, some sixty miles inland on the parallel of El–Muwaylah, approach the coast.
We were guided to the ruins by the shouts of sundry Arabs defending their harvest against a dangerous enemy, the birds—rattles and scarecrows were anything but scarce. Apparently the sand contains some fertilizing matter. ”

“ Our eyes are somewhat startled by the amount of bright and vivid green: for some reason, unknown to us, the shore is far more riant than the northern section; and the land might be called quasi-agricultural. The whole coast seems to be broken with verdant valleys; from the Wady el-‘Ayn, with its numerous branches beautifying the north, to the Wady el-Daghaybaj in the south, supplying water between its two paps. ”

“ Haurá, according to the Arabs, are some remains of buildings and columns, but our stay on the coast was too limited to permit our examining the spot.” He is, however, greatly in error when he adds, “Near this station the encampments of the Bili’ (Baliyy) tribe to the southward terminate, and those of the Joheïnah commence.” As has been seen, the frontier is nearly fifty miles further north. He notices (chap. ix.) the “White Village” to differ with Vincent, who would place it at El–Muwaylah ”

“ The younger generation of officers, it is true, drinks wine, and does not indulge in orisons whilst it should be working; but its efficiency is impaired by the difficulties and delay in granting pensions. ”

“ On the other hand, they seem to preserve a flavour of ancient civilization, which it is not easy to describe; and they certainly have inherited the instincts and tastes of the old metal-workers: they are a race of born miners. ”

“ They brought back specimens of civilized architecture; and these at once determined one of the objectives of our next journey. The party returned to El–Wijh on the next day, in the highest of spirits, after a successful trip of more than fifty miles.
Meanwhile I steamed southwards, accompanied by the rest of the party, including the Sayyid, Shaykh Furayj, and the ex-Wakíl, Mohammed Shahádah, who is trusted by the Bedawin, and who brought with him a guide of the Fawá‘idah-Juhaynah, one Rájih ibn ‘Ayid. ”

“ Yet they divide themselves into a multitude of clans; our companion, the Wakíl Mohammed Shahádah, can enumerate them by the score; and I wrote down the twenty-three principal, which are common both to South Midian and to Egypt. The chief Shaykh, Mohammed ‘Afnán ibn Ammár, can reckon backwards seven generations, beginning from a certain Shaykh Sultán. About ten years ago he allowed the tribe to indulge in such dangerous amusements as “cutting the road” and plundering merchants. ”