the Turkish government.  The Sultan pays pensions in corn and cloth to the very chiefs who arm their varlets against him; and the Pashas, after purloining all they can, hand over to their enemies the means of resistance.  It is more than probable, that Abd al-Majid has never heard a word of truth concerning Al-Hijaz, and that fulsome courtiers persuade him that men there tremble at his name.  His government, however, is desirous, if report speaks truth, of thrusting Al-Hijaz upon the Egyptian, who on his side would willingly pay a large sum to avert such calamity.  The Holy Land drains off Turkish gold and blood in abundance, and the

[p.258] lords of the country hold in it a contemptible position.  If they catch a thief, they dare not hang him.  They must pay black-mail, and yet be shot at in every pass.  They affect superiority over the Arabs, hate them, and are despised by them.  Such in Al-Hijaz are the effects of the charter of Gulkhanah, a panacea, like Holloway’s Pills, for all the evils to which Turkish, Arab, Syrian, Greek, Egyptian, Persian, Armenian, Kurd, and Albanian flesh is heir to.  Such the results of the Tanzimat, the silliest copy of Europe’s folly-bureaucracy and centralisation-that the pen of empirical statecraft ever traced.[FN#27] Under a strong-handed and strong-hearted despotism, like Mohammed Ali’s, Al-Hijaz, in one generation, might be purged of its pests.  By a proper use of the blood feud; by vigorously supporting the weaker against the stronger classes; by regularly defeating every Badawi who earns a name for himself; and, above all, by the exercise of unsparing, unflinching justice,[FN#28] the few thousands of half-naked bandits, who now make the land a fighting field, would soon sink into utter insignificance.

[p.259] But to effect such end, the Turks require the old stratocracy, which, bloody as it was, worked with far less misery than the charter and the new code.  What Milton calls

“The solid rule of civil government”

has done wonders for the race that nurtured and brought to perfection an idea spontaneous to their organisation.  The world has yet to learn that the admirable exotic will thrive amongst the country gentlemen of Monomotapa or the ragged nobility of Al-Hijaz.[FN#29] And it requires no prophetic eye to foresee the day when the Wahhabis or the Badawin, rising en masse, will rid the land of its feeble conquerors.[FN#30]

Sa’ad, the Old Man of the Mountains, was described to me as a little brown Badawi; contemptible in appearance, but remarkable for courage and ready wit.  He has for treachery a keen scent, which he requires to keep in exercise.  A blood feud with Abd al-Muttalib, the present Sharif of Meccah, who slew his nephew, and the hostility of several Sultans, has rendered his life eventful.  He lost all his teeth by poison, which would have killed him, had he not, after swallowing the potion, corrected it by drinking off a large potfull of clarified butter.  Since that time he has lived entirely upon fruits, which he gathers for himself, and