[30] Subsequently, the Wahabees, having been defeated by the son of the Pasha of Egypt, were compelled to quit the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, and the pilgrimage was again performed. The camels that were furnished by the Bedouins were as follow, according to a memorandum I took from the mouth of one of Mahannah’s people at the close of our journey:—Nasar’s tribe, 1,000; Dookhy Weled Aaly, 1,000; El Hawáreh, 2,500; Ismaar Shaykh Gerud, 400: Tuláa, Chief of Suchay, 1050; Regeb, Selim, and Abas, shaykhs of the villages of Caryetayn and Hems, a proportionate quota.
[31] These bludgeons are what an Irishman would term a shilalee, with a round knob at the end: they are called Nabût.
[32] I was on one occasion witness, whilst in the Desert, to the setting of the leg of a sheep, which had been accidentally broken. This was effected by means of two splints of rough wood. To save the animal from injury in walking, a network, consisting of ropes passed lozenge-fashion, as is sometimes seen on jars in England, was contrived, so as to go round the sheep’s body, and the sheep was then slung on one side of a camel, where it was carried in a state of great suffering. Whether it recovered or not I could not learn.
[33] It is affirmed by many travellers that the Bedouins travel by the stars by night, and they are all made out to be astronomers; but, by night, they can obtain a general notion of their direction, as any common person will do in any country, and by day they rely on landmarks only. They know the use of the compass, and were only surprised at the one I showed them, in our second journey, on account of its smallness, being one of those which are of the size of a crown piece.
[34] This observation is not to be taken in its full extent as far as regards places on mountains; for there the sudden chill of the air, after the sun’s rays are withdrawn, condenses the moisture elevated from the plains, and as suddenly checks the perspiration. Hence it has happened to me, in Syria, to find intermittents prevalent in very elevated spots, where not even a pool or a level spot was to be found for leagues around; arising (certainly not from marsh miasmata, but) from the sudden effect of cold on open pores, which, after all, is probably the cause of intermittent fevers in marshy situations, owing to the damp cold which they generate, rather than to any specific quality in decayed vegetable matter.
[35] Rings of silver, worn just above the ancle in the manner that bracelets are worn above the wrist. The bracelets and jamblets are generally one solid ring, not tight, but moveable up and down. They are passed on the arm or legs, generally in youth, by soaping the extremity of the limbs, and by repeatedly rubbing them upwards until the rings slide over, where they remain until death or until they are filed off; for they scarcely can be removed in any other way.
[36] I learned here the composition of an excellent sweet sauce for hare, which was made by pounding stoned raisins in a mortar and boiling or stewing them in chopped onions and butter, putting in the raisins when the butter and onions are first stewed. It is then kept over the fire for a few minutes, and is scarcely to be distinguished from currant jelly.
[37] This Fathallah afterwards assumed the quality of a dragoman, and, from a MS. furnished by him, M. de Lamartine drew up his narrative of M. Lascaris’s adventures.
[38] M. Lascaris remained but a very short time in Palmyra. After a variety of reverses, he died of a fever in Egypt five or six years afterwards.
[39] I have in vain made researches on different maps after some place to which these ruins might belong. Mr. Burkhardt had told me that there was a temple in ruins on Gebel el Abiad; but I was now far away from that mountain.