the plain; they will do this on the Eastern coast of Arabia, but rarely, if ever, in Al-Hijaz.  And it was equally unprofitable for our escort to fire upon a foe ensconced behind stones.  Besides which, had a robber been killed, the whole country would have risen to a man; with a force of 3,000 or 4,000, they might have gained courage to overpower a Caravan, and in such a case not a soul would have escaped.  As it was, the Badawin directed their fire principally against the Albanians.  Some of these called for assistance to the party of Shaykhs that accompanied us from Bir Abbas; but the dignified old men, dismounting and squatting in council round their pipes, came to the conclusion that, as the robbers would probably turn a deaf ear to their words, they had better spare themselves the trouble of speaking.

[p.274] We had therefore nothing to do but to blaze away as much powder, and to veil ourselves in as much smoke, as possible; the result of the affair was that we lost twelve men, besides camels and other beasts of burden.  Though the bandits showed no symptoms of bravery, and confined themselves to slaughtering the enemy from their hill-top, my companions seemed to consider this questionable affair a most gallant exploit.

After another hour’s hurried ride through the Wady Sayyalah, appeared Shuhada, to which we pushed on,

“Like nighted swain on lonely road,
When close behind fierce goblins tread.”

Shuhada is a place which derives its name, “The Martyrs,” because here are supposed to be buried forty braves that fell in one of Mohammed’s many skirmishes.  Some authorities consider it the cemetery of the people of Wady Sayyalah.[FN#10] The once populous valley is now barren, and one might easily pass by the consecrated spot without observing a few ruined walls and a cluster of rude Badawin graves, each an oval of rough stones lying beneath the thorn trees on the left of and a little off the road.  Another half hour took us to a favourite halting-place, Bir al-Hindi,[FN#11] so called from some forgotten Indian

[p.275] who dug a well there.  But we left it behind, wishing to put as much space as we could between our tents and the nests of the Hamidah.  Then quitting the Fiumara, we struck Northwards into a well-trodden road running over stony rising ground.  The heat became sickening; here, and in the East generally, at no time is the sun more dangerous than between eight and nine A.M.  Still we hurried on.  It was not before eleven A.M. that we reached our destination, a rugged plain covered with stones, coarse gravel, and thorn trees in abundance; and surrounded by inhospitable rocks, pinnacle-shaped, of granite below, and in the upper parts fine limestone.  The well was at least two miles distant, and not a hovel was in sight; a few Badawi children belonging to an outcast tribe fed their starveling goats upon the hills.  This place is called “Suwaykah”; it is, I was told, that celebrated in the history of the Arabs.[FN#12] Yet not for this reason did my comrades look lovingly upon its horrors:  their boxes were safe and with the eye of imagination they could now behold their homes.  That night we must have travelled about twenty-two miles; the direction of the road was due East, and the only remarkable feature in the ground was its steady rise.