Of the first stage of the journey, from Gaza on the Mediterranean to the little town of Ma’an, which lies on the route of the caravans from Damascus to Mecca, a short distance to the northeast of Petra, and thus nearly on the boundary between the country of Moab and Edom, Palgrave gives us no account. Yet, in spite of the comparatively brief distance traversed, it must have been both laborious and dangerous. His narrative commences as follows, at the moment of his departure from Ma’an:
“Once for all let us attempt to acquire a fairly correct and comprehensive knowledge of the Arabian Peninsula. With its coasts we are already in great measure acquainted; several of its maritime provinces have been, if not thoroughly, at least sufficiently, explored; Yemen and Hedjaz, Mecca and Medina, are no longer mysteries to us, nor are we wholly without information on the districts of Hadramaut and Oman. But of the interior of the vast region, of its plains and mountains, its tribes and cities, of its governments and institutions, of its inhabitants, their ways and customs, of their social condition, how far advanced in civilization or sunk in barbarism, what do we as yet really know, save from accounts necessarily wanting in fulness and precision? It is time to fill up this blank in the map of Asia, and this, at whatever risks, we will now endeavor; either the land before us shall be our tomb, or we will traverse it in its fullest breadth, and know what it contains from shore to shore. Vestigia nulla retrorsum.”
“Such were my thoughts, and such, more or less, I should suppose, those of my companion, when we found ourselves at fall of night without the eastern gate of Ma’an, while the Arabs, our guides and fellow-travellers, filled their water-skins from a gushing source hard by the town walls, and adjusted the saddles and the burdens of their camels, in preparation for the long journey that lay before us and them. It was the evening of June 16, 1862; the largest stars were already visible in the deep blue depths of a cloudless sky, while the crescent moon, high to the west, shone as she shines in those heavens, and promised us assistance for some hours of our night march. We were soon mounted on our meagre long-necked beasts, ‘as if,’ according to the expression of an Arab poet, ‘we and our men were at mast-heads,’ and now we set our faces to the east. Behind us lay, in a mass of dark outline, the walls and castle of Ma’an, its houses and gardens, and farther back in the distance the high and barren range of the Sheraa’ Mountains, merging into the coast chain of Hejaz. Before and around us extended a wide and level plain, blackened over with countless pebbles of basalt and flint, except where the moonbeams gleamed white on little intervening patches of clear sand, or on yellowish streaks of withered grass, the scanty product of the winter rains, and dried now into hay. Over all a deep silence, which even our Arab companions seemed fearful of breaking; when they spoke it was in a half whisper and in a few words, while the noiseless tread of our camels sped stealthily but rapidly through the gloom without disturbing its stillness.
“Some precaution was not indeed wholly out of place, for that stage of the journey on which we were now entering was anything but safe. We were bound for the Djowf, the nearest inhabited district of Central Arabia, its outlying station, in fact. Now the intervening tract offered for the most part the double danger of robbers and of thirst, of marauding bands and of the summer season. The distance itself to be traversed was near two hundred miles in a straight line, and unavoidable circumstances were likely to render it much longer.”
Palgrave’s companion was a native Syrian, named Barakat—a man on whom he could fully rely. Hardy, young, and enterprising, he belonged to a locality whose inhabitants are accustomed to danger. But the Bedouins who furnished the camels, and acted as guides, were of another class. They were three in number—Salim, their leader, a member of a powerful family of the Howeytat tribe, but outlawed for pillage and murder, and two men, Alee and Djordee, utter barbarians in appearance no less than in character. Even Salim advised the travellers to avoid all familiarities with the latter.
“Myself and my companion,” says Palgrave, “were dressed like ordinary class travellers of inner Syria, an equipment in which we had already made our way from Gaza on the sea-coast to Ma’an without much remark or unseasonable questioning from those whom we fell in with, while we traversed a country so often described already by Pococke, Laborde, and downward, under the name of Arabia Petra, that it would be superfluous for me to enter into any new account of it in the present work. Our dress, then, consisted partly of a long stout blouse of Egyptian hemp, under which, unlike our Bedouin fellow-travellers, we indulged in the luxury of the loose cotton drawers common in the East, while our colored head-kerchiefs, though simple enough, were girt by ’akkals or headbands of some pretension to elegance; the loose red-leather boots of the country completed our toilet.
“But in the large travelling-sacks at our camels’ sides were contained suits of a more elegant appearance, carefully concealed from Bedouin gaze, but destined for appearance when we should reach better inhabited and more civilized districts. This reserve toilet numbered articles like the following: colored overdresses, the Syrian combaz, handkerchiefs whose silk stripes relieved the plebeian cotton, and girdles of good material and tasteful coloring; such clothes being absolutely requisite to maintain our assumed character. Mine was that of a native travelling doctor, a quack if you will; and accordingly a tolerable dress was indispensable for the credit of my medical practice. My comrade, who in a general way passed for my brother-in-law, appeared sometimes as a retail merchant, such as not unfrequently visit these countries, and sometimes as pupil or associate in my assumed profession.
“Our pharmacopoeia consisted of a few but well selected and efficacious drugs, inclosed in small tight-fitting tin boxes, stowed away for the present in the ample recesses of our travelling bags; about fifty of these little cases contained the wherewithal to kill or cure half the sick men of Arabia. Medicines of a liquid form had been as much as possible omitted, not only from the difficulty of insuring them a safe transport amid so rough a mode of journeying, but also on account of the rapid evaporation unavoidable in this dry and burning climate. In fact two or three small bottles whose contents had seemed to me of absolute necessity, soon retained nothing save their labels to indicate what they had held, in spite of airtight stoppers and double coverings. I record this, because the hint may be useful to anyone who should be inclined to embark in similar guise on the same adventures.
“Some other objects requisite in medical practice, two or three European books for my own private use, and kept carefully secret from Arab curiosity, with a couple of Esculapian treatises in good Arabic, intended for professional ostentation, completed this part of our fitting-out. But besides these, an ample provision of cloth handkerchiefs, glass necklaces, pipe-bowls, and the like, for sale in whatever localities might not offer sufficient facility for the healing art, filled up our saddle-bags wellnigh to bursting. Last, but not least, two large sacks of coffee, the sheet-anchor and main hope of our commerce, formed alone a sufficient load for a vigorous camel.”