barren plains: even the sturdy acacias failed, and camel-grass could find no place for its hardy root. The road wound amongst mountains, rocks and ridges of granite, with here and there huge blocks, piled up as if man's art had aided nature to look hideous. Vast clefts seamed as scars the haggard face of earth; here they widened into black ravines; there they narrowed to mere lines white with glistening drift-sand. A sky like polished blue steel rested upon one horizon; on the other, a tremendous blaze of yellow light, untempered by the thinnest thread of mist. All was still as the grave: not a bird or a beast was to be seen or heard; their presence would have argued the vicinity of water, and although my companions detected Badawin lurking among the rocks, I decided these Badawin to be phantoms, fear-begotten. "What' could have tied the leg of Allah's prophet to this bit of Jehannum?" I inquired of my companions. Wallah!" replied one of these Voltairians, "because he could not afford a trip to Stambul."

Between 10 and 11 P.M. we sighted human habitations for the first time since leaving Musahhal, a long straggling village called El Hamra ("the Red "), from the colour of the fiumara upon which it is built; and El Wasitah, the "Half-way," because it is the middle station between Yambu and El Medina.* We wandered in search of an encamping-ground nearly an hour, for the hospitable villagers contented themselves with ordering us off every flatter patch of ground where we proposed to pitch our tents. I was warned by my companions to speak Arabic only, otherwise that the gentry of El Hamra would claim black-mail‍† for permitting me to pass through their streets. After much wrangling we found the encamping place; our jaded beasts were unloaded, the boxes and baggage were disposed in defence, and my friends spreading their rugs upon their valuables, prepared to sleep. I was invited to join them, but firmly declined the vicinity of so many steaming and snoring fellow-creatures. Some wonder was elicited by the Afghan Haji's obstinate recklessness; but a man from Cabul is allowed to do strange things.

21st July. Rising at dawn, I visited the village. It is built upon a narrow shelf, between a high steep hill and a sandy fiumara about half a mile broad, with a winding bed. On all sides are rocks; so here, too, you find yourself in one of those punch-bowls which the Arabs seem to prefer to plains. This fiumara threads

*It is therefore considerably out of place in Burckhardt's map and those copied from it.

† Which they insolently call "tiziyat," a word properly applied to the capitation-tax, levied upon infidels-Jews, Christians, and others-in contradistinction to el fard, the Moslem poll-tax. But in El Hejaz, as elsewhere, men have the amiable habit of treating as "infidels" all whose tenets, practices, ideas, manners, dress, and conduct in general depart in any way from the standard of perfection-their own.

the heights all the way from the Medina plateau, and during the rainy season it becomes a raging torrent, carrying westward to the Red Sea the drainage of a hundred hills. Good water is found in it by digging a few feet below the surface at the reentering angles: and El Hamra is further supplied by a fine spring which bubbles from the base of the southern hills.

The village is a collection of stunted houses, or rather hovels, made of unbaked brick and mud, roofed over with date-leaves, —rarely boasting a bit of plank for a shutter-thickly populated where the walls are standing, but, like all settlements in El Hejaz, half in ruins. It contains a few shops disposed in a long lane; and this bazar, like the other streets, is full of glare and dust. Palm-orchards of considerable extent supply it with dates, and my companions found grain so cheap that they laid in a store for their families at El Medina. Ready-made bread, horse-plantains, rice, butter, and similar edibles, are plentiful. Flocks of sheep and goats were driven in by surly shepherds, who would give no milk even in exchange for bread and meat. I bought a large lamb for a pillar-dollar, and we breakfasted merrily.

Near our encamping-ground was a fort, held by a troop of Arnauts, posted to defend the village and to escort merchanttravellers. It consists of a wall loopholed for musketry, and crenellated with "remparts coquets," trefoil-shaped, and about as business-like as the raised rim of a twelfth-cake. As usual, there is not, I believe, a well in the fort. Around it are clusters of palm-leaf huts, where the soldiery lounge and smoke, and near it a coffee-house-a shed, kept by an Albanian. It is wonderful that the Badawin cannot take these buildings: a false attack, firing the huts, would engross the attention of the defenders; whilst a rope-ladder, or a bag full of powder, would admit the assailants on the other side.

At El Hamra we received the pleasing intelligence that Shaykh Saad was definitively "out." This influential person, a beggarly little old Badawi, brown, toothless, and very thin, is the chief of the Sumaydat and the Mahamid, two influential sub-families of the Ham'dah, the principal family of the Beni Harb clan of Badawin. He aspired to rule all the Ham'dah, and, through them, the Beni Harb, in which case he would have been, despite Pasha and Sherif, de facto tyrant of El Hejaz. Therefore the two dignitaries in esse, after vainly attempting to poison and to shoot him with a pistol fixed in a Rob-Roy purse (made by the Frank and sent by the Sultan), raised up against him a worthy rival in the person of Shaykh Fahd, chief of the Beni Amr, the third subfamily of the Ham'dah family. Hence confusion worse confounded. Every one robbed every one he could. Saad's people, who were numerous, beat Fahd's; Fahd, supported by the autho

and

rities, cut off Saad's supplies. Saad robbed travellers, and had the insolence to turn back the Sultan's mahmal, the ensign of imperial dignity, and to shut the road against the Damascus caravan. Fahd applied to the Sherif of Mecca, and when I left El Hejaz, it was reported that Abd-el Muttalab proposed to take the field in person against the arch robber, whose nephew he had slain some years ago. I did not believe the rumour, because probably the Sherif was at the bottom of the affair: he rules the Arabs, whilst the Pasha rules the Turks; the inevitable consequence of which is anarchy. Possibly Abd-el Majid has never heard a word of truth concerning El Hejaz, and conceives, with Sultanic naïveté, that there, as elsewhere, men tremble at his august name. But the fact is, the "lord Turk holds a contemptible position there. The Sultan pays pensions in corn and cloth to the very Shaykhs, who arm their varlets against him; the Pasha, after purloining all he can, hands over to his foes the means of subsistence. When the officials catch an Arab thief they dare not hang him. Caravans must pay black-mail and yet be shot at in every pass. This was not the case in Mohammed Ali's day. These, in El Hejaz, are the effects of those "liberal insti tutions," the charter of Gulhani and the new civil code, the silliest imitation of Europe's folly-bureaucracy and centralization -that the hand of bungling statecraft ever traced. Such are the results of the novel penal code-a panacea, like Holloway's pills, for all the varied evils to which Turks, Arabs, Syrians, Egyptians, Persians, Armenians, Kurds, Albanians, Greeks, and a variety of European tribes are subject, and a system of Treasury paper, which even the public offices take at a discount. With a sternsouled and strong-handed despotism, like Mohammed Ali's, El Hejaz in one generation might be purged of its pests. By a periodical razzia and a proper use of the blood-feud, by vigorously supporting the weaker against the stronger clans, and by regularly deporting every Badawi of renown, the few thousand of halfnaked bandits who now make the land a fighting-field, would soon sink into utter insignificance. But to effect this end the Turk requires his old "Stratocracy," which, bloody as it was, worked; whereas the Khate Sherif and the Tanzimat do not.

"The solid rule of civil government"

has done wonders for the Anglo-Saxon race; but we have yet to learn that the admirable exotic will thrive amongst the country gentlemen of Kafir-land or the ragged nobility of El Hejaz.

*This assertion may not be popular in England at the present time: nevertheless I am convinced that it is true. The incredulous reader may consult A Year with the Turks,' lately published, by Mr. Warington W. Smyth, a traveller who does ample justice to the Osmanli, and no more.

El Hamra is the 3rd station from El Medina, in the Darb Sultani (Sultan's road), the westerly highway along the seashore to Mecca. When robbers permit them, pilgrims prefer this route to all others, on account of the facility of procuring supplies, and passing through the holy place" Bedr." After midday on the 21st, a caravan en route from Mecca to El Medina entered El Hamra, and the new travellers had interest enough to procure an escort, and permission to proceed without delay. A little after 4 P.M. we urged our camels over the fiery sands to join these Meccans, who were standing ready for the march on the other side of the fiumara; and at 5 we started in an easterly direction up the bed. My companions had found relations and friends in the caravan, so they piously dismounted from their dromedaries during the sunset halt, and prayed with unction. I seldom joined in their devotions, because, in the first place, a sore foot excused me; and secondly, because the character, though highly respectable, is a very inconvenient one in these regions. Shortly after the night set in we came to a dead stop: a dozen different reports arose to account for this circumstance, which was occasioned by a band of Badawin having manned a pass, and positively objected to admit our escort of 200 irregulars. So the horsemen galloped home, and we resumed our journey. This night brought forth no other adventure: we traversed rising ground eastwards, and about midnight passed through another long straggling line of village, called Jadaydah,* or El Khayf. The body of the place lies on the left of the road leading to El Medina: like El Hamra it has a fort, springs of tolerably sweet water, and a date ground. A celebrated saint, Abd-el Rahim el Barai, has left his holy bones here. A little beyond it is the Bughaz,‡ or defile, where the Egyptians under Tussum Bey were totally defeated by the Harbi Badawin and the Wahhabis, in A.D. 1811. At 4 A.M., having travelled about 24 miles due E., we encamped at Bir Abbas.

22nd. The position of Bir Abbas resembles that of El Hamra, a bulge in the hill-girt fiumara, about 2 miles wide. There is the usual stone fort, where troops are stationed to protect travellers, hovels, and a coffee-house of date-leaves, and a hut or two, called a bazar, but no village. We encamped in loose sand, with which the samum filled the air; not a tree nor a bush was in sight, and the animal creation was represented by hardy locusts and swarms of flies. Before noon a caravan brought in two dead

Gadaydah.

+ Khayf, a "declivity," or a "place built upon a declivity," is a common name in this part of Arabia.

Vincent (Periplus) derives this word from the It. bocca, a mouth. It is Turkish, and literally means a throat or gorge. The pure Arabic is nakb, still used by the Badawin.

bodies. a horseman shot by the Badawin, and an Albanian killed by sunstroke, or the poison-wind. Shortly after mid-day we saw a caravan travelling Mecca-wards: it was composed chiefly of Indian pilgrims in "ihram," who had been allowed to pass, because a pound sterling could not have been collected by spilling the life-blood of a hundred of them, and Saad the Robber sometimes does a cheap good deed. In the evening, when strolling about, we met some shaykhs entering Bir Abbas to receive their pensions. They were men of Harb, dignified ancients, habited in the picturesque Badawi costume, with erect forms, fierce, thin features, and white beards, well armed, and mounted on high-bred and handsomely-equipped dromedaries. Preceded by half-naked clansmen, carrying spears 12 or 13 feet long, garnished with single or double tufts of black ostrich feathers, and ponderous matchlocks, which they discharged on approaching the fort, these shaykhs were a perfect picture. Evening was ushered in by the dropping of distant shots, a sign that the troops and hillmen were at work. My companions pointed with a fearful meaning to the far blue peak where terrible Saad holds his court, and we slept upon our boxes in "doleful dumps," for none could say how long we might be confined in our dreary dungeon.

23rd. After a day of heat, sand, samum, wrangling, and general discomfort, we were revived by a report that Arnaut troops would be in the saddle that night. No one believed in such good luck; before sleeping, however, we made preparations for starting at a moment's notice. About 11 P.M., as the moon passed over the eastern wall of rock, we heard the glad sound of the little kettle-drum beating the "General." Within 10 minutes we had loaded the camels, and hurriedly crossing the sandy flat, we found ourselves in company with three or four small caravans, forming one large body for better defence. By dint of elbowing, arms in hand, we, though the last comers, secured a place in the middle of the line. On such occasions all push for the van, none aspiring to occupy that dangerous seat of honour, the rear.

As

24th.-We threaded the fiumara eastwards, and at dawn entered an ill-famed gorge, Shuab el Haj, the Pilgrim's Pass. we neared it, loud talkers became silent, and in their faces fear was written in a fine clear hand. Presently, from the cliff on the left a thin curl of blue smoke rose in the morning air, preluding the matchlock's loud ring. A number of Badawin, boys and men, were swarming like hornets over the crest, and clambering with admirable agility up the precipices, till comfortably seated behind a breastwork of stones, piled up as a defence and a rifle-rest, they fired down upon us with perfect convenience to themselves. It

* The pilgrim's costume.