Giovanni Finati wrongly calls the place “Jedeed Bughaz,” which Mr. Bankes, his editor, rightly translates the “new opening or pass.” [FN#33] Al-Khayf is a common name for places in this part of Arabia.  The word literally means a declivity or a place built upon a declivity. [FN#34] Bughaz means in Turkish the fauces, the throat, and signifies also here a gorge, or a mountain pass.  It is the word now commonly used in Al-Hijaz for the classical “Nakb,” or “Mazik.”  Vincent (Periplus) errs in deriving the word from the Italian “Bocca.” [FN#35] Giovanni Finati, who was present at this hard-fought field as a soldier in Tussun’s army, gives a lively description of the disastrous “day of Jadaydah” in vol. i. of his work. [FN#36] This Abdullah, Pasha of Damascus, led the caravan in A.D. 1756.  When the Shaykhs of the Harb tribe came to receive their black-mail, he cut off their heads, and sent the trophies to Stambul.  During the next season the Harb were paralysed by the blow, but in the third year they levied 80,000 men, attacked the caravan, pillaged it, and slew every Turk that fell into their hands.

[p.264]Chapter XIV.

From Bir Abbas to al-Madinah.

The 22nd July was a grand trial of temper to our little party.  The position of Bir Abbas exactly resembles that of Al-Hamra, except that the bulge of the hill-girt Fiumara is at this place about two miles wide.  There are the usual stone-forts and palm-leaved hovels for the troopers, stationed here to hold the place and to escort travellers, with a coffee-shed, and a hut or two, called a bazar, but no village.  Our encamping ground was a bed of loose sand, with which the violent Samum filled the air; not a tree or a bush was in sight; a species of hardy locust and swarms of flies were the only remnants of animal life:  the scene was a caricature of Sind.  Although we were now some hundred feet, to judge by the water-shed, above the level of the sea, the mid-day sun scorched even through the tent; our frail tenement was more than once blown down, and the heat of the sand made the work of repitching it painful.  Again my companions, after breakfasting, hurried to the coffee-house, and returned one after the other with dispiriting reports.  Then they either quarrelled desperately about nothing, or they threw themselves on their rugs, pretending to sleep in very sulkiness.  The lady Maryam soundly rated her surly son for refusing to fill her chibuk for the twelfth time that morning, with the usual religious phrases, “Allah direct thee into the right way, O my son!"-meaning that he was going to the bad, and “O my calamity, thy mother is a lone woman, O Allah!"-equivalent to the

[p.265] European parental plaint about grey hairs being brought down in sorrow to the grave.  Before noon a small caravan which followed us came in with two dead bodies,-a trooper shot by the Badawin, and an Albanian killed by sun-stroke, or the fiery wind.[FN#1] Shortly after mid-day a Caravan, travelling in an opposite direction, passed by us; it was composed chiefly of Indian pilgrims, habited in correct costume, and hurrying towards Meccah in hot haste.  They had been allowed to pass unmolested, because probably a pound sterling could not have been collected from a hundred pockets, and Sa’ad the Robber sometimes does a cheap good deed.  But our party,