ordering us forthwith to stop.  They at first demanded money to let us pass; but at last, hearing that we were Sons of the Holy Cities, they granted us transit on the sole condition that the military,-whom they, like Irish peasants, hate and fear,-should return to whence they came.  Upon this, our escort, 200 men, wheeled their horses round and galloped back to their barracks.  We moved onwards, without, however, seeing any robbers; my camel-man pointed out their haunts, and showed me a small bird hovering over a place where he supposed water trickled from the rock.  The fellow had attempted a sneer at my expense when the fray was impending.  “Why don’t you load your pistols, Effendi,”

[p.262] he cried, “and get out of your litter, and show fight?” “Because,” I replied as loudly, “in my country, when dogs run at us, we thrash them with sticks.”  This stopped Mansur’s mouth for a time, but he and I were never friends.  Like the lowest orders of Orientals, he required to be ill-treated; gentleness and condescension he seemed to consider a proof of cowardice or of imbecility.  I began with kindness, but was soon compelled to use hard words at first, and then threats, which, though he heard them with frowns and mutterings, produced manifest symptoms of improvement.

“Oignez vilain, il vous poindra! 
Poignez vilain, il vous oindra!”

says the old French proverb, and the axiom is more valuable in the East even than in the West.

Our night’s journey had no other incident.  We travelled over rising ground with the moon full in our faces; and, about midnight, we passed through another long straggling line of villages, called Jadaydah,[FN#32] or Al-Khayf.[FN#33] The principal part of it lies on the left of the road going to Al-Madinah; it has a fort like that of Al-Hamra, springs of tolerable drinking water, a Nakhil or date-ground, and a celebrated (dead) saint, Abd al-Rahim al-Burai.  A little beyond it lies the Bughaz[FN#34] or defile, where in A.D. 1811 Tussun Bey and his 8000 Turks were totally defeated by 25,000 Harbi Badawin and Wahhabis.[FN#35]

[p.263] This is a famous attacking-point of the Beni-Harb.  In former times both Jazzar Pasha, the celebrated “butcher” of Syria, and Abdullah Pasha of Damascus, were baffled at the gorge of Jadaydah[FN#36]; and this year the commander of the Syrian caravan, afraid of risking an attack at a place so ill-omened, avoided it by marching upon Meccah via the Desert road of Nijd.  At four A.M., having travelled about twenty-four miles due East, we encamped at Bir Abbas.

[FN#1] Alluding to the celebrated mountain, the “Hindu-kush,” whence the Afghans sallied forth to lay waste India. [FN#2] Throughout this work I have estimated the pace of a Hijazi camel, laden and walking in caravan line, under ordinary circumstances, at two geographical miles an hour.  A sandy plain or a rocky pass might make a difference of half a mile each way, but not more. [FN#3] See Chap.  VIII., page 152, note