[p.256] Shaykh Hamid “halaled[FN#25]” (butchered) it, according to rule, and my companions soon prepared a feast of boiled mutton.  But that sheep proved a “bone of contention.”  The boy Mohammed had, in a fit of economy, sold its head to a Badawi for three piastres, and the others, disappointed in their anticipations of “haggis,” lost temper.  With the “Demon’s” voluble tongue and impudent countenance in the van, they opened such a volley of raillery and sarcasm upon the young “tripe-seller,” that he in his turn became excited-furious.  I had some difficulty to keep the peace, for it did not suit my interests that they should quarrel.  But to do the Arabs justice, nothing is easier for a man who knows them than to work upon their good feelings.  “He is a stranger in your country-a guest!” acted as a charm; they listened patiently to Mohammed’s gross abuse, only promising to answer him when in his land, that is to say, near Meccah.  But what especially soured our day was the report that Sa’ad, the great robber-chief, and his brother were in the field; consequently that our march would be delayed for some time:  every half-hour some fresh tattle from the camp or the coffee-house added fuel to the fire of our impatience.

A few particulars about this Schinderhans of Al-Hijaz[FN#26] may not be unacceptable.  He is the chief of the Sumaydah and the Mahamid, two influential sub-families of the Hamidah, the principal family of the Beni-Harb tribe of Badawin.  He therefore aspired to rule all the Hamidah, and through them the Beni-Harb, in which case he would have been, de facto, monarch of the Holy Land.  But the Sharif of Meccah, and Ahmad Pasha,

[p.257] the Turkish governor of the chief city, for some political reason degraded him, and raised up a rival in the person of Shaykh Fahd, another ruffian of a similar stamp, who calls himself chief of the Beni-Amr, the third sub-family of the Hamidah family.  Hence all kinds of confusion.  Sa’ad’s people, who number it is said 5000, resent, with Arab asperity, the insult offered to their chief, and beat Fahd’s, who do not amount to 800.  Fahd, supported by the government, cuts off Sa’ad’s supplies.  Both are equally wild and reckless, and-nowhere doth the glorious goddess, Liberty, show a more brazen face than in this Eastern

“Inviolate land of the brave and the free;”

both seize the opportunity of shooting troopers, of plundering travellers, and of closing the roads.  This state of things continued till I left the Hijaz, when the Sharif of Meccah proposed, it was said, to take the field in person against the arch-robber.  And, as will afterwards be seen in these pages, Sa’ad, had the audacity to turn back the Sultan’s Mahmil or litter-the ensign of Imperial power-and to shut the road against its cortege, because the Pashas of Al-Madinah and of the Damascus caravan would not guarantee his restitution to his former dignity.  That such vermin is allowed to exist proves the imbecility of