Then came a visit of three men with good-natured countenances. These were Bedawi minstrels from Tadmor, (Palmyra,) who wander about from tribe to tribe, singing heroic poems to the accompaniment of their rebâbeh, (a very primitive sort of fiddle.) No warfare interferes with the immunity of their persons or property. They are never injured or insulted, but are always and everywhere welcome, and liberally rewarded. Of course it is for their interest to gratify the pride of their auditors by fervid appeals to their ancestral renown, or to individual prowess and generosity.
The Arabic of their chants is unintelligible to towns-people; it is the high classic language of Antar.
I had made acquaintance with these same men before at Tibneen Castle, near the Lebanon, during a season of Bairam. Being Sunday, we requested them to visit our tents in the morning. Our Arabs,
however, and the dragomans kept them singing till a late hour round the fires lighted among the tents. It was a cheerful scene, in the clear starlight, and the lustrous planet Venus reflected in the running stream.
Monday, 14th.—After breakfast, and an entertainment of music from our troubadours, and the bestowing of our guerdon, these left us on their way to the other camp at Na’oor; and our packing up commenced.
Strange medley of costumes and languages among the grand colonnades. Our Arabs left us, having the luggage in charge, and indicating to us the camping-ground where we were to meet again at night—thus leaving us in care of the Saltîyeh friends of ours, who were to escort us to their town and its neighbourhood, as the ’Adwân might not go there themselves.
Both the Christian and Moslem shaikhs of the town came to meet us on the way. The former was a very old man; and he could with difficulty be persuaded to mount his donkey in presence of a train so majestic, in his eyes, coming from the holy city of Jerusalem.
We passed an encampment of Beni Hhasan. These people are few in number, and exist under the shadow of the ’Adwân.
There were plenty of locusts about the country; but we soon came to a vast space of land covered with storks, so numerous as completely to hide
the face of the earth, all of them busily employed in feeding—of course devouring the locusts. So great is the blessing derived from the visits of storks, that the natives of these countries regard it as a sin to destroy the birds. On our riding among them they rose in the air, entirely obscuring he sky and the sun from our view. One of our party attempted to fire among them with his revolver, but, by some heedlessness or accident, the bunch of barrels, being not well screwed down flew off the stock and was lost for a time; it took more than half an hour’s search by all of us to find it again, and the Arabs considered this a just punishment for wishing to kill such useful creatures.