Midrib

“ Eldest Babu! Eldest Babu! Nobin Madhab (with tears in his eyes) Guardian of ryots! Giver of food! Moving his eyes now. Ah! The mother will die immediately. When she heard of his [6] being bound with ropes above ground, she resolved not to take the rice of this sinful world for ten days. This is the fifth; this morning, Nobin Madhab taking hold of her shoulders shed much tears and said, "Mother, if thou dost not take food this day, then I shall never take the rice with clarified butter, thus placing the sin of disobedience to the mother on my head; but shall remain without food." ”

“ Thou, Sarala, hadst a most beauteous face, and didst brighten the lake of my heart. Who did take away my lotus with a cruel heart? The beautiful lake became dark. The world, I look upon, is as a desert full of corpses, while I have lost my father, my mother, my brother, and my wife" [11] .
Ah! where are they gone to in search of the dead body of my brother? I am to prepare for going to the Ganges as soon as they come. Ah! how very terrible, the last scene of the drama of the lion-like Nobin Madhab is? (Sits down, taking hold of Sabitri's feet.) ”

“ Let me here warn future collectors of botany in Midian that throughout the land the vegetable kingdom follows the rule of the mineral: every march shows something new; and he who neglects to gather specimens, especially of the smaller flowers, in one valley, will perhaps find none of them in those adjoining.
A denser row of trees lower down the Wady Hujayl led to the water of Amdán (Mídán?) , about an hour and a half from our last nighting-place; yesterday it had been reported six hours distant. High towering on our left (north) rose three huge buttresses of the Girágir. ”

“ Mrs. Wood can never dance with any other but our Saheb; and I saw that when I was a bearer. Mrs. Wood is very kind; through the influence of one letter, she got me the Jamadary of the jail.
Darogah. Ah! Babu Bindu Madhab expressed great sorrow at his (father's) not eating food. When Babu Bindu sees this, he will quit life.
Enter Bindu Madhab
All things are by the will of God.
Bindu. What is this! What is this! Ah! ah! My father is dead while bound above ground with a rope! I was coming to try some means for his release. What sorrow! ”

“ Speaking some words to Mesrour in the language of Arabia, the blackamore brought in and proceeded to invest Mr. Middleton with an elegant silken habit consisting of a pair of exceedingly baggy trousers of the hue of emeralds, a round jacket whose crimson rivalled the rubies of Farther Ind, and a vest of snowy white. Double rows of small pearls ornamented the edges of the jacket, which was short and just met a copper-colored sash about the waist. After inducting him into a pair of white leggings and bronze shoes, Mesrour clapped upon his head a large white turban ornamented with a black aigret. ”

“ Mihtab Kor’s son shall not die of hunger or thirst. I will send thee food and water, but by the hand of a mitráni [sweeper, one of very low caste] . Eat, drink, and be doubly defiled!”
“Not by the hand of a mitráni!” exclaimed the Brahmin, as his aunt went away to mount the stair to the upper gallery, from which a savoury scent of curry was now proceeding.
“By a mitráni,” repeated Chand Kor, turning round to give a look of contempt. “Thou art only fit to herd with mihtars.”
The English reader will hardly understand the utter disgust with which the high-caste Hindu looks down on the mihtar. ”

“ Both the climate and the vegetation of Midian must have changed immensely if these huge features, many of them five miles broad, were ever full of water. In modern days, after the heaviest rains, a thin thread meanders down a wilderness of bed.
The Wady-formation shows great regularity. Near the mouth its loose sands are comfortable to camels and distressing to man and mule. The gravel of the higher section is good riding; the upper part is often made impassable by large stones and overfalls of rock; and the head is a mere couloir. Flaked clay or mud show the thalweg ”

“ Now Mehrab Khan astonished them still further, for, from a cleft at the back of the hole, he produced some billets of dry juniper wood. It would burn wretchedly, he explained apologetically, but was better than nothing. The place had been an old resort of mountain herdsmen, and the wood had been kept ready stored for emergencies. And then, still further amazement followed, for Mehrab Khan produced—this time from his own store—a little rice and corn meal tied up in a rag. Would the Huzoor deign to accept it for himself and the Miss Sahib? ”

“ It appears that the females Samkhat and Kharimtu prevailed upon Hea-bani to come to Erech and see the exploits of the giant Izdubar, and he declared that he would bring a Midannu, most probably a tiger, to Erech, in order to make trial of the strength of Izdubar, and to see if he could destroy it.
The Midannu is mentioned in the Assyrian texts as a fierce carnivorous animal allied to the lion and leopard; it is called Midannu, Mindinu, and Mandinu. ”

“ Bindu Madhab brought the Inspector with him, and it is his desire, that all with one mind try to establish the school. But observing the unfortunate state of the country, he was obliged to keep his design to himself; how very mild, quiet, good-natured, and wise is he become now! Wisdom in younger years is as beautiful as the fruits in a small plant. In reading of the sorrow which my brother has expressed in his letter even the hard stone is melted and the heart of the Indigo Planter would become soft. ”

“ The trees want thinning; the undergrowth is so dense as to be impenetrable; but the heads are all carefully trimmed, the first time we have seen such industry in Midian. The shade attracts vipers, chiefly the Echis: and I was startled by hearing the gay warble of the Bulbul—a nightingale in Arabia! ”

“ The half-Fellah Bedawin, like the shepherds, their predecessors, in the days of Abimelech and Jethro, are ever chary of their treasure; the only object being extra camel-hire. After eating your salt, a rite whose significance, by-the-by, is wholly ignored throughout Midian and its neighbourhood, they will administer under your eyes a silencing nudge to an over-communicative friend. 'The very children that drive the sheep and goats instinctively deny all knowledge of the Themáil ("pits") and holes acting as wells. ”

“ This line seems to drain inland; presently it bends round by the east and feeds the Wady Dámah. Rain must lately have fallen, for the earth is “purfled flowers,” pink, white, and yellow. The latter is the tint prevailing in Midian, often suggesting the careless European wheat-field, in which “shillock” or wild mustard rears its gamboge head above the green. Midian wants not only the charming oleander and the rugged terebinth, typical of the Desert ”

“ We left this Wady at a bend, some two hundred metres wide, called the "Broad of the Jujube," from one of the splendid secular trees that characterize North Midian. Near the camping-ground we shall find another veteran Zizyphus, whose three huge stems, springing from a single base, argue a green old age. Here both banks of the Fiumara are lined with courses of rough stone, mostly rounded and rolled boulders, evidently the ruins of the water-conduits which served to feed the rich growth of the lower 'Afa'l. ”

“ He lived to taste of fire and boiling ghee.” And the rest of the band laughed like fiends, but the wretched Hindu covered his face and shook.
“Well mayst thou tremble,” went on his pitiless tormentor. “For should Ibrahim return without ten thousand rupees, or not return at all, by the setting of the third sun, thine own skin shall dry beside that one.”
The victim uttered a loud cry.
“The third sun! Why, Sirdar Sahib, that will be impossible. I can never have so much money collected in so short a time. Make it the sixth sun.”
Murad Afzul consulted a moment with his followers. ”

“ The dirty-white turbans had been laid aside in favour of a conical dust-coloured kulla, the neutral hue of which headgear blended with the sad tints of the surrounding rocks and stones.
“I know not, brother,” rejoined the second hook-nosed son of the wilderness. “Yet it seems that since the Sirkar (Note 1) has been changed at Mazaran, a great change too has come over our father the Nawab.”
“Nawab!” repeated the first speaker, with disgust. “Nawab! How can our chief take such a dirty title, only fit for swine of Hindu idolators. ”

“ At a re-entering angle of the junction, a shallow pit was sunk; the sand became moist and red, and presently it was underlaid by a rubble of porphyritic trap. Nothing more!
We then crossed the Wady Rábigh, another of the short broad valleys which distinguish this section of South Midian. The bed sides, especially the right, are heaps and mounds of snowy quartz, with glittering crowns of block and boulder: all prove to be veins in the grey granite, whose large coarse elements are decomposed by weather. ”

“ The Arab's face brightened. "It has a gate studded with iron, half open," said Ali hastily; "there is a mulberry-tree in the open space in front, and you can just see the top of the Kitibea above the houses. There is a water fountain under the mulberry-tree."
"You know it, O Sheik!" said Ain ed Djin. "But I hope the Rabbi's daughter will not be obstinate; better be a Moslem than eaten by a lion. I have seen these things before, but it never came to blood, for none can look on the face of a lion, with his eyes fixed on them, and no bars between, and not tremble and submit. ”

“ Midian, called nowadays by its inhabitants, as by the mediæval Arabic geographers, Arz Maydan, the Land of Midian, is that part of Arabia which occupies the east coast of the Gulf of Akabah, and extends some two degrees further to the south. The borders are somewhat difficult to ascertain, and it is probable that the ancient Midianites, like some of the larger and more powerful Bedawin tribes of the present day, wandered far and wide, and that their limits shrunk or extended according to their numbers, or the resisting power of their neighbours. ”

“ Mines of Midian,” is confined to the descendants of the third brother.
The Huwaytát tribe is not only an intruder, it is also the aggressive element in the Midianite family of Bedawin; and, of late years, it has made great additions to its territory. If it advances at the present rate it will, after a few generations, either “eat up,” as Africans say, all the other races or, by a more peaceful process, assimilate them to its own body.
We also consulted Shaykh Hasan and his cousin Ahmed, alias Abú Khartúm, concerning the origin of his tribe, the Beni ‘Ukbah. ”

“ Though the Mihráb, Minber, and Mahfil of the Muëzzins are only formed of plain white marble, yet the last is of such exquisite workmanship, that it seems to be the Mahfil of Paradise; the Minber is also made of plain marble, but is surmounted by a conical tiara-like canopy, the like of which is no where to be found; and the Mihráb is like that of his Majesty Solomon himself. Above it there is engraved in letters of gold, on an azure ground,76 from the hand-writing of Karah-hisárí, this text of the Korán (iii. 32) , “Whenever Zakariyyà (Zacharias) went into the chamber (mihráb) to her.” ”

“ Not the least pleasant part of our evening’s work was collecting information concerning the origin of the tribes inhabiting modern Midian; and, as on such occasions a mixed multitude was always present, angry passions were often let rise. As my previous volume showed, the tribes in this Egyptian corner of North–Western Arabia number three—the Huwaytát, the Maknáwi, and the Beni ‘Ukbah ”

“ The Moslem provided Mr. Middleton with one of those pipes which in various parts of the Orient are known as narghilehs, hubble-bubbles, or hookabadours, and seeing his guest entirely at his ease, without ado began as follows:
“My name is Achmed Ben Daoud, and I am hereditary emir of the tribe of Al-Yam, which ranges on the border of that fortunate part of the Arabian peninsular known as Arabia the Happy. My youngest brother, Ismail, desirous of seeing the world, went to the court of Oman, where struck by his inimitable skill in narration, the imam installed him as royal story-teller. ”

“ Richard's Midian was an utterly unknown country along the east coast of the Gulf of Akabah, one of the two narrow inlets in which the Red Sea ends. When I say unknown, it has been practically unvisited and its shores unexplored until now. There is abundant evidence of a former population and a cultivated period; there are ruins of large towns, of solid masonry, roads cut in the rock, aqueducts five miles long ”

“ Sadhu. But our eldest Babu has very great courage. On the day the Saheb said, "If you don't hear the Amin, and don't plant the Indigo within the ground marked off, then shall we throw your houses into the river Betroboti, and shall make you eat your rice in the factory godown," the eldest Babu replied, "As long as we shall not get the price for the fifty bigahs [2] of land sown with Indigo last year, we will not give one bigah this year for Indigo. What do we care for our house? We shall even risk (pawn) our lives." ”

“ His strong, handsome face, with its flowing black beard, was well set off by the great turban wound round a blue kûlla, whose conical peak was just visible above the snowy folds. Two jetty tresses of long hair fell over his broad chest, almost to the hem of a rich vest of blue velvet embroidered with gold; the only colour which relieved his white garments. Campian, for his part, as he returned the other’s handshake, and noted the free, full fearlessness of the glance which met his, decided that here indeed was a noble specimen of an Oriental chieftain. ”