The young man seized my bridle, but he let go on receiving a gentle kick from my offside boot, and fell in with the party behind, eagerly inquiring who I was. ’Abd el Gâder was not, I think, at his ease, but he showed great coolness, explaining that I was an English Consul, come to see the condition of the country. A Consul, it must be understood, represents the highest dignity amongst Europeans in the Bedawîn eyes, as a “Milord” does among the Lebanon mountaineers.
The immediate result of this announcement was a burst of eloquence from the Arabs. “Look at our country, O Consul!” they said; “it has no water, no vineyards, no corn; when will you come and give us water, and make us vineyards?” I replied with a comprehensive nod of the head and the remark that “God made the country for the Bedawî.” These people seem to have a firmly-rooted conviction that Christians can command the rain, and that they had once made vineyards in this part of the wilderness.
The new-comers next descended to the more engrossing, if less poetic, topic of tobacco, but I pretended not to understand. These Arabs smoke “hunting-pipes” with a stem half an inch long, and generally fill them with dried stalks or wood-chips. They always ask either for tobacco or for gunpowder.
We reached a high, narrow saddle, when suddenly, from a hollow, six more men, fully armed, sprang up and joined the others, who were apparently the advanced scouts. I rode in front at a slow pace, and carefully refrained from looking round or showing any signs of uneasiness, as Bedawîn eyes are very sharp in watching for symptoms of alarm which may encourage them to bully. I confess that it is unpleasant to be followed by ten loaded guns, in the middle of a lonely desert, without a European to help in case of a fight, or any protection beyond the very doubtful one of a single Bedawî of another tribe.
The wild figures hovered round, half clad and entirely savage, skipping like wild goats, and gesticulating energetically: and I could not but think of David’s band of outlaws, who had once scoured this very wilderness, hiding in the hollows, or descending on the unwary sleepers by night. Powder and tobacco alone make the difference between the ancient and the modern nomads, and show that even the Bedawî is not untouched by modern civilisation.
At length we reached the boundary valley, and descended into it. Looking back, I saw the K’aabneh, perched on fragments of rock, watching to see that we really kept in the Tâ’amireh district; and, satisfied at last, they filed along a goat-track on the white cliff above us, and disappeared just as we stopped at a well. ’Abd el Gâder was much relieved, and he took care to tell me that his influence alone had prevented my being killed and robbed on the spot.
On Monday, the 1st of March, we moved to Engedi, accompanied by ’Abd el Gâder and by six of his men. Our road was across rolling downs of white marl, only remarkable for the jerboa burrows. We passed by the graves of some of the Rushâideh Arabs, who had been killed, I believe, by the Egyptians, and our guides reverently kissed the tombstones, which were marked with the tribe Wusm, or sign. By one o’clock we reached the top of the cliffs over the spring, 2000 feet above the Dead Sea, where is a flat plateau, with cliffs on three sides, bounded by two magnificent gorges, which run down towards the shore; and on this plateau we camped.
The cliffs are vertical, but their feet are covered by a steep slope of soft débris. Both the gorges have springs in them, and both run with water in winter. The northern gorge is the finest, and as we looked down we could not but shudder when an Arab said quietly, “A man once fell from the top of this cliff.”
The Arabs wished us to go down to the spring; but it would probably have cost us the loss of several of the pack animals if we had attempted to take them, loaded and fatigued as they were, down the winding track cut in the face of the precipice. I decided to camp above, and sent the beasts down unloaded to drink. They took an hour to go down, and another to come up, and all that time, as we watched from above, a stone might have been dropped on to their saddles. We afterwards found a hollow in the rocks above the cliffs with rain-water in it; and on this the whole party, with twenty-two animals, lived for two days, at the end of which time the water was exhausted.
Next morning I descended the pass to the warm spring of Engedi, 1340 feet beneath our camp; there is no scene more vividly impressed on my memory than that of this magnificently rocky and savage pass, and the view from the spring which is given in the illustration.