eaten in a half-ripe state; large coarse bananas, lime trees, a few water-melons, figs, and apples, but neither apricots nor pears.[FN#14] There are three kinds of pomegranates:  the best is the Shami (Syrian):  it is red outside, very sweet, and costs one piastre:  the Turki is large, and of a white colour:  and the Misri has a greenish rind, and a somewhat sub-acid and harsh flavour; the latter are sold at one-fourth the price of the best.  I never saw in the East, except at Meccah, finer fruits than the Shami:  almost stoneless like those of Maskat, they are delicately perfumed, and as large as an infant’s head.  Al-Madinah is celebrated, like Taif, for its “Rubb Rumman,” a thick pomegranate syrup, drunk

[p.406]with water during the hot weather, and esteemed cooling and wholesome.

After threading our way through the gardens, an operation requiring less time than to describe them, we saw, peeping through the groves, Kuba’s simple minaret.  Then we came in sight of a confused heap of huts and dwelling-houses, chapels and towers with trees between, and foul lanes, heaps of rubbish, and barking dogs,-the usual material of a Hijazi village.  Having dismounted, we gave our animals in charge of a dozen infant Badawin, the produce of the peasant gardeners, who shouted “Bakhshish” the moment they saw us.  To this they were urged by their mothers, and I willingly parted with a few paras for the purpose of establishing an intercourse with fellow-creatures so fearfully and wonderfully resembling the tailless baboon.  Their bodies, unlike those of Egyptian children, were slim[FN#15] and straight, but their ribs stood out with curious distinctness; the colour of the skin was that oily lamp-black seen upon the face of a European sweep; and the elf-locks, thatching the cocoa-nut heads, had been stained by the sun, wind, and rain to that reddish-brown hue which Hindu romances have appropriated to their Rakshasas or demons.  Each anatomy carried in his arms a stark-naked miniature of himself, fierce-looking babies with faces all eyes, and the strong little wretches were still able to extend the right hand and exert their lungs with direful clamour.  Their mothers were fit progenitors for such progeny:  long, gaunt, with emaciated limbs, wall-sided, high-shouldered, and straight-backed, with pendulous bosoms, spider-like arms, and splay feet.  Their long elf-locks, wrinkled faces, and high cheek-bones, their lips darker than the epidermis, hollow staring eyes, sparkling as if to light up the extreme

[p.407]ugliness around, and voices screaming as though in a perennial rage, invested them with all the “charms of Sycorax.”  These “Houris of Jahannam” were habited in long night-gowns dyed blue to conceal want of washing, and the squalid children had about a yard of the same material wrapped round their waists for all toilette.  This is not an overdrawn portrait of the farmer race of Arabs, the most despised by their fellow-countrymen, and the most hard-favoured, morally as well as physically, of all the breed.