January 23.—It is like a dream to be sitting here, writing a journal on a rock in Jebel Shammar. When I remember how, years ago, I read that romantic account by Mr. Palgrave, which nobody believed, of an ideal State in the heart of Arabia, and a happy land which nobody but he had seen, and how impossibly remote and unreal it all appeared; and how, later during our travels, we heard of Nejd and Haïl and this very Jebel Shammar, spoken of with a kind of awe by all who knew the name, even by the Bedouins, from the day when at Aleppo Mr. S. first answered our vague questions about it by saying, “It is possible to go there. Why do you not go?” I feel that we have achieved something which it is not given to every one to do. Wilfrid declares that he shall die happy now, even if we have our heads cut off at Haïl. It is with him a favourite maxim, that every place is exactly like every other place, but Jebel Shammar is not like anything else, at least that I have seen in this world, unless it be Mount Sinaï, and it is more beautiful than that. All our journey to-day has been a romance. We passed through Igneh in the early morning, stopping only to water our animals. It is a pretty little village, something like Jobba, on the edge of the sand, but it has what Jobba has not, square fields of green barley unwalled outside it. These are of course due to irrigation, which while waiting we saw at work from a large well, but they give it a more agricultural look than the walled palm-groves we have hitherto seen. Immediately after Igneh we came upon hard ground, and in our delight indulged our tired mares in a fantasia, which unstiffened their legs and did them good. The soil was beautifully crisp and firm, being composed of fine ground granite, quite different from the sandstone formation of Jobba and Jôf. The vegetation, too, was changed. The yerta and adr and other Nefûd plants had disappeared, and in their place were shrubs, which I remember having seen in the wadys of Mount Sinaï, with occasionally small trees of the acacia tribe known to pilgrims as the “burning bush”—in Arabic “talkh”—also a plant with thick green leaves and no stalks called “gheyseh,” which they say is good for the eyes. Every now and then a solitary boulder, all of red granite, rose out of the plain, or here and there little groups of rounded rocks, out of which we started several hares. The view in front of us was beautiful beyond description, a perfectly even plain, sloping gradually upwards, out of which these rocks and tells cropped up like islands, and beyond it the violet-coloured mountains now close before us, with a precipitous cliff which has been our landmark for several days towering over all. The outline of Jebel Shammar is strangely fantastic, running up into spires and domes and pinnacles, with here and there a loop-hole through which you can see the sky, or a wonderful boulder perched like a rocking stone on the sky line. One rock was in shape just like a camel, and would deceive any person who did not know that a camel could not have climbed up there. At half-past one we passed the first detached masses of rock which stand like forts outside a citadel, and, bearing away gradually to the left, reached the buttresses of the main body of hills. These all rise abruptly from the smooth sloping surface of the plain, and, unlike the mountains of most countries, with no interval of broken ground. Mount Sinaï is the only mountain I have seen like this. In both cases you can stand on a plain, and touch the mountain with your hand. Only at intervals from clefts in the hills little wadys issue, showing that it sometimes rains in Jebel Shammar. Indeed to-night, we shall probably have a proof of this, for a great black cloud is rising behind the peaks westwards, and every now and then it thunders. All is tight and secure in our tent against rain. There is a small ravine in the rock close to where we are encamped, with a deep natural tank full of the clearest water. We should never have discovered it but for the shepherd who came on with us to-day, for it is hidden away under some gigantic granite boulders, and to get at it you have to creep through a hole in the rock. A number of bright green plants grow in among the crevices (capers?), and we have seen a pair of partridges, little dove-coloured birds with yellow bills.
We passed a small party of Bedouin Shammar, moving camp to-day. One of them had a young goshawk [210] on his delúl. They had no horses with them, and we have not crossed the track of a horse since leaving Shakik. I forgot to say that yesterday we saw a Harb Bedouin, an ugly little black faced man, who told us he was keeping sheep for the Emir. The Harb are the tribe which hold the neighbourhood of Medina, and have such an evil reputation among pilgrims.
January 24.—Thunderstorm in the night. We sent on Radi early this morning, for we had only a few miles to go, with our letters to Haïl. It was a lovely morning after the rain, birds singing sweetly from the bushes, but we all felt anxious. Even Mohammed was silent and preoccupied, for none knew now what any moment might bring forth. We put on our best clothes, however, and tried to make our mares look smart. We had expected to find Haïl the other side of the hills, but this was a mistake. Instead of crossing them, we kept along their edge, turning gradually round to the right, the ground still rising. The barometer at the camp was 3370, and now it marks an ascent of two hundred feet.
We passed two villages about a mile away to our left, El Akeyt and El Uta; and from one of them we were joined by some peasants riding in to Haïl on donkeys. This looked more like civilisation than anything we had seen since leaving Syria. We were beginning to get rather nervous about the result of our message, when Radi appeared and announced that the Emir had read our letters, and would be delighted to see us. He had ordered two houses to be made ready for us, and nothing more remained for us to do, than to ride into the town, and present ourselves at the kasr. It was not far off, for on coming to the top of the low ridge which had been in front of us for some time, we suddenly saw Haïl at our feet not half a mile distant. The town is not particularly imposing, most of the houses being hidden in palm groves, and the wall surrounding it little more than ten feet high. The only important building visible, was a large castle close to the entrance, and this Radi told us was the kasr, Ibn Rashid’s palace.
In spite of preoccupations, I shall never forget the vivid impression made on me, as we entered the town, by the extraordinary spick and span neatness of the walls and streets, giving almost an air of unreality.
CHAPTER X.
“There’s daggers in men’s smiles.”—Shakespeare.
Haïl—The Emir Mohammed Ibn Rashid—His menagerie—His horses—His courtiers—His wives—Amusements of the ladies of Haïl—Their domestic life—An evening at the castle—The telephone.
As we stayed some time at Haïl, I will not give the detail of every day. It would be tedious, and would involve endless repetitions, and not a few corrections, for it was only by degrees that we learned to understand all we saw and all we heard.