"Professor Palmer spent twelve years in England, chiefly at Cambridge, working most energetically the professional, literary, and especially the Oriental veins. His friends lamented that he devoted so much valuable time to what Sir W. Jones calls the 'avenues and porticoes of learning,' dictionaries and vocabularies, grammars and manuals, instead of cultivating his high gifts of fancy and imagination. Yet he found time for a spirited metrical version of the Arab poet Buhá El Dín of Egypt, for a romantic life of Harún El-Rashíd, and for the charming 'Song of the Reed,' a title redolent of Persian mysticism. His Biography told his various gifts, as a traveller, a professor, a University lecturer and examiner, an improvisatore and rhymer, a barrister, an actor, a conjurer and thought-reader, a draughtsman and caricaturist, a writer of many books, and lastly, a politician and journalist.
"About the end of last June, when the troubles in Egypt became serious, 'The Palmer' resolved to make practical use of his linguistic studies, and gallantly volunteered to take part in putting down the rebellion. His project was to dissuade the Bedawi from attacking the Suez Canal, to collect camels for transport, and to raise the Wild Men of the Tíh against the Rebels. He was duly warned, I believe, that in case of capture he would be treated as a prisoner of war, perhaps as a spy; but no consideration of personal danger had any weight with his gallant spirit.
"The brave heart landed at Jaffa in the Austro-Hungarian Lloyd's. During his few days of preparation he became immensely popular; three months afterwards I found every one full of his praises. Mr. Besant is right: 'Perhaps it would not be too much to assert that he had no business or private relations with any man who did not straightway become his friend.' He engaged a dragoman, a Christian pupil of the American College, Bayrút; and as servant a young Jew of Jaffa, who, by-the-by, has left a large family utterly destitute. He then visited the Rev. Mr. Schapira at Ghazzah, and set out by 'Short Desert,' as older travellers called it, for Suez. An obituary article in the Academy (November 18th) declares that he 'turned back a Bedawy invasion of the Suez Canal.' I could hear nothing of this exploit on the spot. He might, and perhaps he would, have done it had he had the opportunity; but he also had grossly exaggerated in his own mind the numbers and the importance of the Tíh tribes. For his thousands we must read hundreds.
"On August 1st Shaykh Abdullah El Shámi (the Syrian) met at Suez his future companions, Captain Gill and Lieutenant Charrington, R.N. The former was a well-known and admirable traveller, who had spent the last winter studying Arabic in North Africa, and who had already done good service by cutting the telegraphic wires connecting Egypt with Syria. The latter was a young officer of great promise, burning to win his spurs. And now the fatal series of mistakes seems to have begun. I cannot but think that, after so many quiet, peaceful years in England, the laborious Desert march through the fiery heats of July must have affected, to a certain extent, Palmer's strong clear brain.
"Before entering the Arabian wastes, strangers always hire and pay a Ghafír—guide and protector. He ought to be a powerful chief, who can defend his 'guests' by the prestige of his name, and if necessary by the number of his matchlocks. Palmer may have preserved some sentimental reminiscences of his Bedawi friends and acquaintances; and may even have trusted to the exploded prestige of 'bread and salt.' The old chivalrous idea has gradually weakened till it has well-nigh died out. It may linger amongst the highest and noblest clans of the Anazeh, but it no longer extends beyond El-Nejd. The partial modification consists of feeding the Bedawi every day; otherwise, if you plead Nahnu málihín! ('We are salt-fellows'), they rejoin, 'The salt is not in my belly.' The great majority of these 'sons of 'Antar,' who 'have ceased to be gentlemen,' ignore or rather deride the rococo practice of their forefathers. And there are scoundrels who will offer you a bowl with one hand and stab you with the other.
"Palmer engaged as his Ghafír one Matr (Abú) Nassár, so named after his son; his family name is Abú Safíh. The man is not, and never was, a 'Bedouin Sheik,' but a mere hirer of camels to pilgrims and travellers. He had quarrelled with, and parted from, his kinsmen the Lahiyát, to take refuge with the Dabbúr, a clan or sub-tribe of the Huwaytát. This Matr, moreover, was judged by those who knew him best to be light-headed and half-witted. His proceedings with Colonel Warren and his conduct on board the Carysfort, where he was detained for his own safety, confirm the suspicion. Yet he and his nephew—the camel-men do not count—were the only defence of an expedition which carried, amongst other valuables, the sum of £3000 in gold. Travellers in Bedawi-land never even name the noble metal, and the venerable Arab proverb says, 'Ikhfi zahab-ak, wa mazhab-ak wa Ziháb-ak'—'Hide thy gold, thy God-faith, and thy goings forth.' It has been asserted that the Englishmen had no firearms. This is an absurdity at first sight, and it is disproved by the gun produced at Ghazzah.
"The ill-starred party left Suez on August 8th, and passed the first night upon the sea-sands. On the 9th they marched viâ 'Moses' Wells' to the Wady Kahabín, and next day, leaving their luggage in the rear, they entered the Wady Sadr, which heads near El-Nakhl. On the right jaw of this fiumara rises the Tel el-Sadr, alias Tel Bishr, the 'Barn Hill' of our Hydrographic Charts, a broken tabular block within sight of the Suez Hotel.
"About midnight on August 10th, the expedition was surprised by a large body of the Terábín, or Bedawi of the Tíh, who trade with Ghazzah, and the Huwaytát, a mongrel tribe of Egypto-Arabs who are settled upon the Nile banks, nomads in the 'Sinaitic' peninsula and semi-nomads in the Land of Midian.[5] Palmer, they say, was the only one of the little party who fired and wounded a Bedawin in the foot.
"I pass rapidly over the deplorable scene which followed the attack. Palmer, seeing the extreme danger, expostulated with the horde of hired assassins; but all his sympathetic faculty, his appeals to Arab honour and superstition, his threats, his denunciations, and the gift of eloquence which had so often prevailed with the Wild Men, were unheeded. As vainly, Matr covered his protégés with his 'abá (cloak), thus making them part of his own family. On the evening of August 11th, the captives were led, according to the general voice of the Bedawi informants, to the high bank of the Wady Sadr, where it receives another and a smaller fiumara yet unnamed. Here they were slaughtered in cold blood and thrown down the height. The object of not burying the bodies, according to-Bedawi practice, was the dread lest they should afterwards be discovered by means known to the Frank. It was thought safer to leave them to the birds and beasts of the wilderness. Moreover, the first rain-torrent would sweep away all traces of the foul deed.
"And here let me note that on this occasion the Bedawi behaved as Bedawi never behaved before. The Wild Men will attack strangers for the smallest inducement. They will plunder their captives, strip, beat, and even wound them. They will shoot the enemy when maddened by fight; but their almost superstitious terror of the Dam, or Thár (Vendetta, blood-feud) prevents their taking life in cold blood. Nor have I ever heard of their keeping prisoners for a whole day and then deliberately massacring them after the fury of battle had cooled down. The whole conduct of the crime evidently suggests the far-seeing iniquity of civilized men; nor is it hard to divine whence came the suggestion.