negro slave in the room, who had been with my host on that expedition.
The most lively fellow, however, of the party was one Hadj ’Abdallah of Jerusalem, who has two wives, one a daughter of Ibn Simhhan, the other a daughter of Abu Gosh!! His property in Jerusalem consists chiefly of houses let out to Jews, whom he mimicked in their Spanish and German dialects.
At length came supper; then sleep.
* * * * *
Saturday, 9th.—Asaad Ibn Simhhan and Hadj ’Abdallah rode with us to Mezra’ah to show us some ruins of an ancient city near it, called Hharrâsheh, where, as they told us, there are “figures of the children of men” cut in the rock. This roused our curiosity immensely, and I felt sure of success in such company; for though we were in a very wild and unknown country, we had the second greatest of the Ibn Simhhan family with us, and the Hadji was evidently popular among them all.
We sent on our luggage before us to Jerusalem by Bait Unah and Bait Uksa.
In rather less than an hour we reached Mezra’ah—the journey much enlivened by the drollery and songs of Hadj ’Abdallah. Both he and Asaad had capital mares and ornamented long guns. The latter was all dressed in white—the turban, abbai, etc. His face was pale, and even his mare white.
Arrived at the village, we all mounted to the roof of a house—the people paying great reverence to Asaad. Gradually we found the whole population surrounding us, and then closing nearer and nearer upon us. As the heat of the sun increased, we descended to an arcade of the same house, at the end of which there were some itinerant Christians mending shoes for the people.
A breakfast was brought to us of eggs swimming in hot butter and honey, with the usual Arab cakes of bread. The crowd could not be kept off; and the people themselves told us it was because they had never before seen Europeans.
One man asked for some gunpowder from my horn. I gave some to Asaad, and one of the villagers took a pinch of it from him; then went to a little distance, and another brought a piece of lighted charcoal to make it explode on his hand. He came to me afterwards, to show with triumph what good powder it must be, for it had left no mark on his skin.