“He then took his leave with a semblance of affectionate cordiality that made the bystanders stare; thus supporting to the last the profound dissimulation which he had only once belied for a moment. The letter was duly handed over to us the same afternoon by his head steward, whom he had left to look after the house and garden in his absence. Doubtless my readers will be curious to know what sort of recommendation ’Obeyd had provided us with. It was written on a small scrap of thick paper, about four inches each way, carefully folded up and secured by three seals. However, ‘our fears forgetting manners,’ we thought best with Hamlet to make perusal of this grand commission before delivering it to its destination. So we undid the seals with precautions admitting of reclosing them in proper form, and read the royal knavery. I give it word for word; it ran thus: ‘In the name of God the Merciful, the Compassionate, we, ’Obeyd-ebn-Rasheed, salute you, O ’Abdallah, son of Feysul-ebn-Sa’ood, and peace be on you, and the mercy of God and His blessings.’ (This is the invariable commencement of all Wahabee epistles, to the entire omission of the complimentary formulas used by other Orientals.) ‘After which,’ so proceeded the document, ‘we inform you that the bearers of this are one Seleem-el-’Eys, and his comrade, Barakat-esh-Shamee, who give themselves out for having some knowledge in’—here followed a word of equivocal import, capable of interpretation alike by ‘medicine’ or ‘magic,’ but generally used in Nedjed for the latter, which is at Ri’ad a capital crime. ‘Now may God forbid that we should hear of any evil having befallen you. We salute also your father, Feysul, and your brothers, and all your family, and anxiously await your news in answer. Peace be with you.’ Here followed the signet impression.
“A pretty recommendation, especially under the actual circumstances! However, not content with this, ’Obeyd found means to transmit further information regarding us, and all in the same tenor, to Ri’ad, as we afterward discovered. For his letter, I need hardly say that it never passed from our possession, where it yet remains as an interesting autograph, to that of ’Abdallah; with whom it would inevitably have proved the one only thing wanting, as we shall subsequently see, to make us leave the forfeit of our lives in the Nedjean man-trap.
“Before evening three men knocked at our door; they were our future guides. The eldest bore the name of Mubarek, and was a native of the suburbs of Bereydah; all three were of the genuine Kaseem breed, darker and lower in stature than the inhabitants of Ha’yel, but not ill-looking, and extremely affable in their demeanor.
“We had soon made all necessary arrangements for our departure, got in a few scattered debts, packed up our pharmacopoeia, and nothing now remained but the pleasurable pain of farewells. They were many and mutually sincere. Meta’ab had indeed made his a few days before, when he a second time left Ha’yel for the pastures; Telal we had already taken leave of, but there remained his younger brother Mohammed to give us a hearty adieu of good augury. Most of my old acquaintance or patients, Dohey the merchant, Mohammed the judge, Doheym and his family, not forgetting our earliest friend Seyf the chamberlain, Sa’eed, the cavalry officer, and others of the court, freemen and slaves, white or black (for negroes readily follow the direction indicated by their masters, and are not ungrateful if kindly treated, while kept in their due position), and many others of whose names Homer would have made a catalogue and I will not, heard of our near departure and came to express their regrets, with hopes of future meeting and return.”
“Early next morning, before day, Mubarek and another of his countrymen, named Dahesh, were at our door with the camels. Some of our town friends had also come, even at this hour, to accompany us as far as the city gates. We mounted our beasts, and while the first sunbeams streamed level over the plain, passed through the southwestern portal beyond the market-place, the 8th of September, 1862, and left the city of Ha’yel.”
CHAPTER XII.
Palgrave’s Travels—Journey to Bereydah.
Another stage of our way. From Gaza to Ma’an, from Ma’an to the Djowf, from the Djowf to Ha’yel, three such had now been gone over, not indeed without some fatigue or discomfort, yet at comparatively little personal risk, except what nature herself, not man, might occasion. For to cross the stony desert of the northern frontier, or the sandy Nefood in the very height of summer, could not be said to be entirely free from danger, where in these waterless wastes thirst, if nothing else, may alone, and often does, suffice to cause the disappearance of the over-venturous traveller, nay, even of many a Bedouin, no less effectually than a lance-thrust or a musket-ball. But if nature had been so far unkind, of man at least we had hitherto not much to complain; the Bedouins on the route, however rough and uncouth in their ways, had, with only one exception, meant us fairly well, and the townsmen in general had proved friendly and courteous beyond our expectation. Once within the established government limits of Telal, and among his subjects, we had enjoyed our share in the common security afforded to wayfarers and inhabitants for life and property, while good success had hitherto accompanied us. ‘Judge of the day by its dawn,’ say the Arabs; and although this proverb, like all proverbs, does not always hold exactly true, whether for sunshine or cloud, yet it has its value at times. And thus, whatever unfavorable predictions or dark forebodings our friends might hint regarding the inner Nedjed and its denizens, we trusted that so favorable a past augured somewhat better things for the future.
“From physical and material difficulties like those before met with, there was henceforward much less to fear. The great heats of summer were past, the cooler season had set in; besides, our path now lay through the elevated table-land of Central Arabia, whose northern rim we had already surmounted at our entrance on the Djebel Shomer. Nor did there remain any uncultivated or sandy track to cross comparable to the Nefood of Djowf between Ha’yel and Ri’ad; on the contrary, we were to expect pasture lands and culture, villages and habitations, cool mountain air, and a sufficiency, if not an abundance, of water. Nor were our fellow-companions now mere Bedouins and savages, but men from town or village life, members of organized society, and so far civilized beings.
“When adieus, lookings back, wavings of the hand, and all the customary signs of farewell and good omen were over between our Ha’yel friends and ourselves, we pursued our road by the plain which I have already described as having been the frequent scene of our morning walks; but instead of following the southwesterly path toward Kefar, whose groves and roof-tops now rose in a blended mass before us, we turned eastward, and rounded, though at some distance, the outer wall of Ha’yel for nearly half an hour, till we struck off by a southeasterly track across stony ground, diversified here and there by wells, each with a cluster of gardens and a few houses in its neighborhood. At last we reached a narrow winding pass among the cliffs of Djebel ’Aja’, whose mid-loop encircles Ha’yel on all sides, and here turned our heads to take a last far-off view of what had been our home, or the agreeable semblance of a home, for several weeks.