[p.250] All the camel-men brandished their huge staves, and rushed back vociferating in the direction of the robbers.  They were followed by the horsemen; and truly, had the thieves possessed the usual acuteness of the profession, they might have driven off the camels in our van with safety and convenience.[FN#14] But these contemptible beings were only half a dozen in number, and they had lighted their matchlocks, which drew a bullet or two in their direction.  Whereupon they ran away.  This incident aroused no inconsiderable excitement, for it seemed ominous of worse things about to happen to us when entangled in the hills, and the faces of my companions, perfect barometers of fair and foul tidings, fell to zero.  For nine hours we journeyed through a brilliant moonlight, and as the first grey streak appeared in the Eastern sky we entered a scanty “Misyal,[FN#15]” or Fiumara, strewed with pebbles and rounded stones, about half a mile in breadth, and flanked by almost perpendicular hills of primitive formation.  I began by asking the names of peaks and other remarkable spots, when I found that a folio volume would not contain a three months’ collection[FN#16]:  every hill and dale, flat, valley, and

[p.251] water-course here has its proper name or rather names.  The ingenuity shown by the Badawin in distinguishing between localities the most similar, is the result of a high organization of the perceptive faculties, perfected by the practice of observing a recurrence of landscape features few in number and varying but little amongst themselves.  After travelling two hours up this torrent bed, winding in an Easterly direction, and crossing some “Harrah,” or ridges of rock, “Ria,” steep descents,[FN#17] “Kitaah,” patch of stony flat, and bits of “Sahil,” dwarf plain, we found ourselves about eight A.M., after a march of about thirty-four miles, at Bir Sa’id (Sa’id’s Well), our destination.

I had been led to expect at the “Well,” a pastoral scene, wild flowers, flocks and flowing waters; so I looked with a jaundiced eye upon a deep hole full of slightly brackish water dug in a tamped hollow-a kind of punch-bowl with granite walls, upon whose grim surface a few thorns of exceeding hardihood braved the sun for a season.  Not a house was in sight-it was as barren and desolate a spot as the sun ever “viewed in his wide career.”  But this is what the Arabian traveller must expect.  He is to traverse, for instance, the Wady Al-Ward-the Vale of Flowers.  He indulges in sweet recollections of Indian lakes beautiful with the Lotus, and Persian plains upon which Narcissus is the meanest of grasses.  He sees a plain like swish-work, where knobs of granite act daisies; and where, at every fifty yards, some hapless bud or blossom is dying of inanition among the stones.

The sun scorched our feet as we planted the tent, and, after drinking our breakfast, we passed the usual day of perspiration and semi-lethargy.  In discomfort man naturally