Our horses were much in need of rest after their laborious day's work, and it may be imagined how welcome the flaming fire close to the tents was to ourselves, and how heartily we enjoyed the evening meal which we found ready laid for us, and the repose upon the soft outspread carpets. All around us were encamped troops of Bedouins, the song of whose women resounded far away in the stillness of the night.
KATYA.
III.
FROM KATYA TO BIR EL ABD.
We awoke in sunny Katya, a delicious oasis of the most beautiful and shady of palms! While the tents were being packed, that they might be sent on to Bir el Abd, I reconnoitred the immediate neighbourhood. In the middle of the zone of palms which encircle Katya like a girdle, is an elevation covered with fragments of tiles, between which grow numerous plants of Sedum, some of which are very thick-leaved. Near an old tamarisk stands a very peculiar ruin of turret-like appearance, called by the Arabs Burj—"castle." It is built of tiles and stones, horizontally and vertically placed, and has a spiral staircase inside. Not far off is a Koubba, containing a tomb, a defaced marble inscription in Arabian, and two ancient columns, from one of which a garland hangs. The palm-leaf stalks stuck in the ground outside indicate the sites of various graves. Scattered about are several enclosures formed with stalks of palm leaves, for the storage of ripe dates. The ground on which the ruin stands is picturesquely surrounded with palms, of which there are four principal groups, the total number of trees being perhaps 1500, for which the resident Bedouins have to pay the Government 1600 piastres a year.
In the first group of palms near the Koubba is the telegraph station, or little house of the Arab watchmen who see to the maintenance of the telegraph posts and wires. Behind a small hillock south of this house there is another Koubba called Sheik el Mzeyen (see illustration), with a doorstep of apparently old marble stone and an ornamental cupola. It is surrounded by a great number of aloes, and contains a simple tomb. Here, too, is a burial-place, with the graves indicated either by two stones, a piece of palm stem, or a leaf stalk, and, in some cases, by a fragment of camel bone. From this Koubba, the palm plantations extend southward and form a kind of festoon with the Keteya group, which is protected on the south-west by a hill of white sand.
