On one occasion I was obliged personally to exert myself to prevent a party of ladies being thrust into an old and bad transit-van; the ruder sex having stationed itself at some distance from the starting-place in order to seize upon the best. [FN#6] Abraham, for breaking his father’s idols, was cast by Nimrod into a fiery furnace, which forthwith became a garden of roses. (See Chapter xxi. of the Koran, called “the Prophets.”) [FN#7] David worked as an armourer, but the steel was as wax in his hands. [FN#8] Solomon reigned over the three orders of created beings:  the fable of his flying carpet is well known. (See Chapter xxvii. of the Koran, called “the Ant.”) [FN#9] These are mystic words, and entirely beyond the reach of dictionaries and vocabularies. [FN#10] In Moresby’s Survey, “Sherm Demerah,” the creek of Demerah.  Ali Bey calls it Demeg. [FN#11] See “The Land of Midian (Revisited)” for a plan of Al-Dumayghah, and a description of Al-Wijh (al-Bahr) These men of the Beni Jahaynah, or “Juhaynah” tribe-the “Beni Kalb,” as they are also called,-must not be trusted.  They extend from the plains north of Yambu’ into the Sinaitic Peninsula.  They boast no connection with the great tribe Al-Harb; but they are of noble race, are celebrated for fighting, and, it is said, have good horses.  The specimens we saw at Marsa Dumayghah were poor ones, they had few clothes, and no arms except the usual Jambiyah (crooked dagger).  By their civility and their cringing style of address it was easy to see they had been corrupted by intercourse with strangers. [FN#12] It is written Wish and Wejh; by Ali Bey Vadjeh and Wadjih; Wodjeh and Wosh by Burckhardt; and Wedge by Moresby. [FN#13] The terrible Afghan knife. [FN#14] These the Arabs, in the vulgar tongue, call Jarad al-Bahr, “sea locusts”; as they term the shrimp Burghut al-Bahr, or the sea-flea.  Such compound words, palpably derived from land objects, prove the present Ichthyophagi and the Badawin living on the coast to be a race originally from the interior.  Pure and ancient Arabs still have at least one uncompounded word to express every object familiar to them, and it is in this point that the genius of the language chiefly shows itself. [FN#15] The Arab superstition is, that these flashes of light are jewels made to adorn the necks and hair of the mermaids and mermen.  When removed from their native elements the gems fade and disappear.  If I remember right, there is some idea similar to this among the Scotch, and other Northern people. [FN#16] The word Jabal will frequently occur in these pages.  It is applied by the Arabs to any rising ground or heap of rocks, and, therefore, must not always be translated “Mountain.”  In the latter sense, it has found its way into some of the Mediterranean dialects.  Gibraltar is Jabal al-Tarik, and “Mt.  Ethne that men clepen Mounte Gybelle” is “Monte Gibello,"-the mountain, par excellence. [FN#17] It was most probably a prickle of the “egg-fruit,” or Echinus, so common in these seas, generally supposed to be poisonous.