We travelled towards the South-East, and entered a country destitute of the low ranges of hill, which from Al-Madinah southwards had bounded the horizon. After
[p.131] a two miles march our camels climbed up a precipitous ridge, and then descended into a broad gravel plain. From ten to eleven A.M. our course lay southerly over a high table-land, and we afterwards traversed, for five hours and a half, a plain which bore signs of standing water. This days march was peculiarly Arabia. It was a desert peopled only with echoes,a place of death for what little there is to die in it,a wilderness where, to use my companions phrase, there is nothing but He.[FN#6] Nature scalped, flayed, discovered all her skeleton to the gazers eye. The horizon was a sea of mirage; gigantic sand-columns whirled over the plain; and on both sides of our road were huge piles of bare rock, standing detached upon the surface of sand and clay. Here they appeared in oval lumps, heaped up with a semblance of symmetry; there a single boulder stood, with its narrow foundation based upon a pedestal of low, dome-shapen rock. All were of a pink coarse-grained granite, which flakes off in large crusts under the influence of the atmosphere. I remarked one block which could not measure fewer than thirty feet in height. Through these scenes we travelled till about half-past four P.M., when the guns suddenly roared a halt. There was not a trace of human habitation around us: a few parched shrubs and the granite heaps were the only objects diversifying the hard clayey plain. Shaykh Masud correctly guessed the cause of our detention at the inhospitable halting-place of the Mutayr (Badawin). Cook your bread and boil your coffee, said the old man; the camels will rest for awhile, and the gun will sound at nightfall.
We had passed over about eighteen miles of ground; and our present direction was South-west twenty degrees of Al-Sufayna.
At half-past ten that evening we heard the signal for
[p.132] departure, and, as the moon was still young, we prepared for a hard nights work. We took a south-westerly course through what is called a Waarrough ground covered with thicket. Darkness fell upon us like a pall. The camels tripped and stumbled, tossing their litters like cockboats in a short sea; at times the Shugdufs were well nigh torn off their backs. When we came to a ridge worse than usual, old Masud would seize my camels halter, and, accompanied by his son and nephew bearing lights, encourage the animals with gesture and voice. It was a strange, wild scene. The black basaltic field was dotted with the huge and doubtful forms of spongy-footed camels with silent tread, looming like phantoms in the midnight air; the hot wind moaned, and whirled from the torches flakes and sheets of flame and fiery smoke, whilst ever and anon a swift-travelling Takht-rawan, drawn by mules, and surrounded by runners bearing gigantic mashals or cressets,[FN#7] threw a passing glow of red light upon the dark road and the dusky multitude. On this occasion the rule was every man for himself. Each pressed forward into the best path, thinking only of preceding his neighbour. The Syrians, amongst whom our little party had become entangled, proved most unpleasant companions: they often stopped the way, insisting upon their right to precedence. On one occasion a horseman had the audacity to untie the halter of my dromedary, and thus to cast us adrift, as it were, in order to make room for some excluded friend. I seized my sword; but Shaykh Abdullah stayed my hand, and addressed the intruder in terms sufficiently violent to make him slink away. Nor was this the only occasion on which my
[p.133] companion was successful with the Syrians. He would begin with a mild Move a little, O my father! followed, if fruitless, by Out of the way, O Father of Syria[FN#8]! and if still ineffectual, advancing to a Begone, O he! This ranged between civility and sternness. If without effect, it was supported by revilings to the Abusers of the Salt, the Yazid, the Offspring of Shimr. Another remark which I made about my companions conduct well illustrates the difference between the Eastern and the Western man. When traversing a dangerous place, Shaykh Abdullah the European attended to his camel with loud cries of Hai! Hai[FN#9]! and an occasional switching. Shaykh Abdullah the Asiatic commended himself to Allah by repeated ejaculations of Ya Satir! Ya Sattar[FN#10]!
[p.134]The morning of Wednesday (September 7th) broke as we entered a wide plain. In many places were signs of water: lines of basalt here and there seamed the surface, and wide sheets of the tufaceous gypsum called by the Arabs Sabkhah shone like mirrors set in the russet framework of the flat. This substance is found in cakes, often a foot long by an inch in depth, curled by the suns rays and overlying clay into which water had sunk. After our harassing night, day came on with a sad feeling of oppression, greatly increased by the unnatural glare:
In vain the sight, dejected to the ground,
Stoopd for relief: thence hot ascending streams
And keen reflection paind.
We were disappointed in our expectations of water, which usually abounds near this station, as its name, Al-Ghadir, denotes. At ten A.M. we pitched the tent in the first convenient spot, and we lost no time in stretching our cramped limbs upon the bosom of mother Earth. From the halting-place of the Mutayr to Al-Ghadir is a march of about twenty miles, and the direction south-west twenty-one degrees. Al-Ghadir is an extensive plain, which probably presents the appearance of a lake after heavy rains. It is overgrown in parts with Desert vegetation, and requires nothing but a regular supply of water to make it useful to man. On the East it is bounded by a wall of rock, at whose base are three wells, said to have been dug by the Caliph Harun. They are guarded by a Burj, or tower, which betrays symptoms of decay.
In our anxiety to rest we had strayed from the Damascus Caravan amongst the mountaineers of Shammar. Our Shaykh Masud manifestly did not like the company; for shortly after three P.M. he insisted upon our striking the tent and rejoining the Hajj, which lay encamped about two miles distant in the western part of the basin. We