I hurry over these last days, indeed the heat and the march absorbed all our faculties and thought. Our plan was to start about three o’clock in the afternoon, when usually a light breeze sprang up from the south-east, and travel on till the moon set, or till some creek barred passage for the night; then sleep upon the ground till dawn, and on again till eight. By that hour the sun had become a fierce and importunate thing, beating as if with a weight upon our heads; and, choosing a place where there was some show of pasture, we unloaded and turned out our beasts to graze, and then rigged up the tent and lay gasping under it in the breathless air, supporting life with tea. Hajji Mohammed now was only capable of tea-making. In all things else he had become idiotic, sitting half back on his beast, or in the tent, ejaculating: “Allah kerim,” God is generous. Our tempers all were severely tried, and we could do little now to help each other. Ghada and Rahim, Arab and Persian, were at daggers drawn. The horses’ backs for the first time were getting sore, and the dogs were run nearly off the soles of their feet. Shiekha and Sayad in a course in which they killed a gazelle were injured, the former having cut her feet badly on the glazed edges of some dry cracked mud she had galloped over. Lastly, and this was a terrible grief, one of the camels being badly loaded had slipped its pack, and in the fall Rasham had been crushed. The falcon’s leg was broken, and for the last three days of our journey, it seemed impossible he should live, clinging as he was obliged to do by one leg to the saddle. It was all like a night-mare, with no redeeming feature but that we knew now the end was close at hand.
On the 25th we reached Gunawa, on the 26th Bender Rik and on the 27th, Rohalla, where we crossed the river, and then marching on without halting through the night, we forded a shallow arm of the sea, and found ourselves the next morning about dawn upon the edge of the Khor, or salt lake of Bushire. As the sun rose Bushire itself was before us, and our long march was at an end.
It was now necessary to abandon our nomadic life, and shipping all our goods in a “baggara,” and leaving the unloaded camels to be driven round at low tide to the neck of the Bushire peninsula, we put ourselves and our dogs and bird on board, and with a fresh breeze ran in two hours to the custom-house landing. There, taken for Arabs, we had long to wait, but in the end procuring porters, walked in procession through the streets to the Residency. When we arrived at the door of the Residency, the well-dressed Sepoys in their smart European uniforms, barred us the door with their muskets. They refused to believe that such vagabonds, blackened with the sun, and grimed with long sleeping on the ground, were English gentlefolks or honest people of any sort.
APPENDIX.
NOTES ON THE PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF NORTHERN ARABIA.
Arabia between latitude 34° and latitude 29°, may be described in general terms as a plain of sand-stone grit, or gravel, unbroken by any considerable range of hills, or by any continuous watercourse, if we except the Wady Hauran, which traverses it in the extreme north and in rainy seasons forms a succession of pools from the Harra, east of Jebel Hauran, to the Euphrates. This stony plain is known to the Bedouins as the Hamád or “Plain” par excellence; and though for the most part destitute of perennial pasture, or of water above ground, there are certain districts in it better provided which form their winter quarters. Such are the above mentioned Wady Hauran, the resort of the Bisshr Ánazeh, and the Wady-er-Rothy, of the Daffir, and Shammar. A few wells would seem to exist on the line of certain ancient routes, traversing the Hamád from various points on the Euphrates, and these form centres of attraction to the tribes. But their immediate neighbourhood is invariably barren, having been pitilessly browsed down for centuries. Routes of this sort connect Kâf with Shedadi, Meskakeh with Suk-esh-Shiókh, and Jôf with Maan. But the best frequented of them and that best supplied with water is the great Haj road from Meshhed Ali to Jebel Shammar, called the road of Zobeydeh. On this wells and reservoirs were constructed in the 9th century, by the widow of Harun-el-Rashid, and kháns, for the convenience of pilgrims, the ruins of which still exist.
The Hamád, starting from the level of the Euphrates, rises rapidly for a few miles through a district much intersected by ravines, to an upper plateau, which thenceforward has a fairly regular slope upwards towards the west and south of 8 to 10 feet per mile. The drainage of the plain would not, however, seem to be continuous towards the river; but to terminate in certain sandy hollows, known by the name Buttn Jôf or Bekka, all signifying belly or receptacle, which may in former times have been lakes or small inland seas. These do not now at any time of the year hold water above ground, but at the depth of a few feet below the surface it may be found in wells. Such are the Buttn on the Haj road, in which the Wady-er-Rothy terminates, the oases of Taibetism and Jobba in the south, and I believe that of Teyma in the west; but the most remarkable of them all is without comparison the so-called Wady and Jôf of Sirhan.
The Wady Sirhan bisects northern Arabia in a line parallel with the Euphrates and with the coast lines of the Peninsula, that is to say, nearly from N.W. to S.E. Immediately east and north of it the Hamád reaches its highest level, 2,500 feet above the sea; and the cliffs bounding it on this side are rather abrupt, corresponding, as I am inclined to think, with the general formation of the plain. This consists of a series of shelves set one above the other, with their edges opposed to the general slope; a formation very evident on the Haj road, where the traveller from Nejd, though in reality descending at a general rate of more than eight feet to the mile, is tempted to fancy himself on an ascending road, owing to the frequent Akabas or steep cliffs he has to climb. I am inclined, therefore, to believe that the Wady Sirhan and the Jôf receive their drainage principally from the west, and that there is a second great watershed to the plain in the volcanic region, which, according to Guarmani, continues the Hauran ridge southwards to Tabuk. East of the Wady Sirhan I was struck by the absence of large tributary wadys such as one would expect if the area drained was a wide one. The Wady Sirhan, however, in the days when it was an inland sea, must have received contributions from all sides. It lies as a trough between two watersheds in the plain, and may have been supplied from Jebel Aja in the south, as it is still supplied from Jebel Hauran in the north. Its general level below that of the adjacent plain eastwards, is about 500 feet, and the plain may rise again still higher to the west.
Be this as it may, one thing is clear, namely, that the Wady was and is the great central receptacle of the plain, and corresponds pretty closely with its neighbour, the still existing Dead Sea, while the Wady-er-Rajel entering it from the north, holds towards it the position of the Jordan. Water in the Wady Sirhan is found at a nearly uniform level of 1850 feet; and this rule applies to that part of it which is known as the Jôf as well as to the rest. The abundance of water obtainable from its wells along a line extending 300 miles from the frontier of Syria, to within 200 of the frontier of Nejd, points out Wady Sirhan as the natural high road of Northern Arabia, and such it must from the earliest times have been. It is probable that in the days when Arabia was more populous than now, villages existed in it at intervals from Ezrak to Jôf. At present, the wells of these only remain, if we except the twin oases of Kâf and Ithery, still preserved in life by the salt lakes which supply them with an article of trade. These are but poor places, and their population can hardly exceed two hundred souls.