“A little thing is a little thing,
But ‘excitement’ in little things
Is a great thing”—in the desert.
On one occasion we passed an Arab lying on his back and covered with his aba, the native cloak worn by all classes. We heard afterwards that it was a case of murder; that the man had been dead three days, and only then had been found by his sons, who were out searching for their father. Hastily covering him with one of their cloaks, they had rushed off to try and find the murderer and avenge their father’s blood. We met them soon afterwards, and they told the whole story to our escort.
Travelling in Winter
A large caravan leaving Isphahan for Yezd while snow is lying on the ground. The man who is holding the horse’s head was our servant for a year. He is an Armenian, and is now working as an assistant in the Isphahan Hospital.
In the preceding chapters we have seen how often the cry of “Wolf, wolf!” was raised when there was no wolf, till we began to think that the much-talked-of robbers of the desert did not exist at all, or, if they did exist, would not dare to touch a European caravan. However, we soon learnt to our cost that this was not the case.
Two years ago we were travelling from Mosul to Aleppo, and had almost reached our destination when we met with the following adventure.
Having reached the end of our stage one day, we had encamped within a stone’s throw of the river Euphrates, just outside the town of Beridjik. Our tent was pitched beneath a lovely spreading tree, under which ran a sparkling stream on its way from the mountains to the river. We thought what an ideal camping-ground it made, and apparently the same thought entered the minds of some others, only from a different standpoint. All round us were signs of the industry of the villagers in the form of huge stacks of corn freshly reaped, now waiting for the threshing time to begin. Ere we retired for the night we were strolling by the stream and amongst the corn, where we noticed two men sitting in the field, who gave us the evening salutations as we passed by. We did not attribute any importance to this fact, as it is not unusual for the villagers to set watchmen to guard their corn during harvest time and afterwards, till the grain is safely housed.