SHAYKH NASSAR, a Badawi of Tur (Mount Sinai,) being on his way homewards, agreed to let me have two dromedaries for the sum of fifty piastres, or about ten shillings, each.1 Being desirous to set out with a certain display of respectability, I accepted these terms: a man of humble pretensions would have travelled with a single animal, and a camel-man running behind him. But, besides ostentation, I wanted my attendant to be mounted, that we might make a forced march in order to ascertain how much a four years’ life of European effeminacy had impaired my powers of endurance. The reader may believe the assertion that there are few better tests than an eighty-four mile ride in mid-summer, on a bad wooden saddle, borne by a worse dromedary, across the Suez Desert. Even the Squire famed for being copper-sheeted might not have disdained a trial of the kind.

I started my Indian boy and heavy luggage for Suez two days before the end of the Id, — laden camels generally taking fifty-five or sixty hours to do the journey, and I spent the intermediate time with Haji Wali. He advised me to mount about 3 P.M., so that I might arrive at Suez on the evening of the next day, and assisted me in making due preparations of water, tobacco, and provisions. Early on the morning of departure the Afghan Shaykh came to the Caravanserai, and breakfasted with us, “because Allah willed it.” After a copious meal he bestowed upon me a stately benediction, and would have embraced me, but I humbly bent over his hand: sad to relate, immediately that his back was turned, Haji Wali raised his forefinger to a right angle with the palm (chaff), and burst into a shout of irreverent laughter. At three o’clock Nassar, the Badawi, came to announce that the dromedaries were saddled. I dressed myself, sticking a pistol in my belt, and passing the crimson silk cord of the “Hamail” or pocket Koran over my shoulder, in token of being a pilgrim. Then distributing a few trifling presents to friends and servants, and accompanied by the Shaykh Mohammed and Haji Wali, I descended the stairs with an important gait. In the courtyard squatted the camels, (dromedaries they could not be called,) and I found that a second driver was going to accompany us. I objected to this, as the extra Badawi would, of course, expect to be fed by me; but Nassar swore that the man was his brother, and as you rarely gain by small disputes with these people, he was allowed to have his own way.

Then came the preparatory leave-takings. Haji Wali embraced me heartily, and so did my poor old Shaykh, who, despite his decrepitude and my objections, insisted upon accompanying me to the city gate. I mounted the camel, crossed my legs before the pommel-stirrups are not used in Egypt2 — and, preceding my friend, descended the street leading towards the Desert. As we emerged from the huge gateway of the Caravanserai all the bystanders, except only the porter, who believed me to be a Persian, and had seen me with the drunken captain, exclaimed, “Allah bless thee, Y’al-Hajj,3 and restore thee to thy country and thy friends!” And passing through the Bab al-Nasr, where I addressed the salutation of peace to the sentry, and to the officer commanding the guard, both gave me God-speed with great cordiality4 — the pilgrim’s blessing in Asia, like the old woman’s in Europe, being supposed to possess peculiar efficacy. Outside the gate my friends took a final leave of me, and I will not deny having felt a tightening of heart as their honest faces and forms faded in the distance.

But Shaykh Nassar switches his camel’s shoulder, and appears inclined to take the lead. This is a trial of manliness. There is no time for emotion. Not a moment can be spared, even for a retrospect. I kick my dromedary, who steps out into a jog-trot. The Badawin with a loud ringing laugh attempt to give me the go-by. I resist, and we continue like children till the camels are at their speed, though we have eighty-four miles before us, and above us an atmosphere like a furnace blast. The road is deserted at this hour, otherwise grave Moslem travellers would have believed the police to be nearer than convenient to us.

Presently we drew rein, and exchanged our pace for one more seasonable, whilst the sun began to tell on man and beast. High raised as we were above the ground, the reflected heat struck us sensibly, and the glare of a macadamized road added a few extra degrees of caloric.5 The Badawin, to refresh themselves, prepare to smoke. They fill my chibuk, light it with a flint and steel, and cotton dipped in a solution of gunpowder, and pass it over to me.6 After a few puffs I return it to them, and they use it turn by turn. Then they begin to while away the tedium of the road by asking questions, which passe-temps is not easily exhausted; for they are never satisfied till they know as much of you as you do of yourself. They next resort to talking about victuals; for with this hungry race, food, as a topic of conversation, takes the place of money in happier lands. And lastly, even this engrossing subject being exhausted for the moment, they take refuge in singing; and, monotonous and droning as it is, their Modinha has yet an artless plaintiveness, which admirably suits the singer and the scenery. If you listen to the words, you will surely hear allusions to bright verdure, cool shades, bubbling rills, or something which hereabouts man hath not, and yet which his soul desires.

And now while Nassar and his brother are chaunting a duet, — the refrain being,

“W’al arz mablul bi matar,”

“And the earth wet with rain,” —

I must crave leave to say a few words, despite the triteness of the subject, about the modern Sinaitic race of Arabs.

Besides the tribes occupying the northern parts of the peninsula, five chief clans are enumerated by Burckhardt.7 Nassar, and other authorities at Suez, divided them into six, namely:—

1. Karashi, who, like the Gara in Eastern Arabia, claim an apocryphal origin from the great Koraysh tribe.
2. Salihi, the principal family of the Sinaitic Badawin.
3. Arimi: according to Burckhardt this clan is merely a sub-family of the Sawalihahs.
4. Sa’idi. Burckhardt calls them Walad Sa’id and derives them also from the Sawalihahs.
5. Aliki; and lastly, the
6. Muzaynah, generally pronounced M’zaynah. This clan claims to be an off-shoot from the great Juhaynah tribe inhabiting the coasts and inner barrens about Yambu’. According to oral tradition, five persons, the ancestors of the present Muzaynah race, were forced by a blood-feud to fly their native country. They landed at the Shurum,8 or creek-ports, and have now spread themselves over the Eastern parts of the so-called “Sinaitic” peninsula. In Al-Hijaz the Muzaynah is an old and noble tribe. It produced Ka’ab al-Ahbar, the celebrated poet, to whom Mohammed gave the cloak which the Ottomans believe to have been taken by Sultan Salim from Egypt, and to have been converted under the name of Khirkah Sharif, into the national Oriflamme.

There are some interesting ethnographical points about these Sinaitic clans — interesting at least to those who would trace the genealogy of the great Arabian family. Any one who knows the Badawin can see that the Muzaynah are pure blood. Their brows are broad, their faces narrow, their features regular, and their eyes of a moderate size; whereas the other Tawarah9 (Sinaitic) clans are as palpably Egyptian. They have preserved that roundness of face which may still be seen in the Sphinx as in the modern Copt, and their eyes have that peculiar size, shape, and look, which the old Egyptian painters attempted to express by giving to the profile, the form of the full, organ. Upon this feature, so characteristic of the Nilotic race, I would lay great stress. No traveller familiar with the true Egyptian eye, — long, almond-shaped, deeply fringed, slightly raised at the outer corner and dipping in front like the Chinese,10 — can ever mistake it. It is to be seen in half-castes, and, as I have before remarked, families originally from the banks of the Nile, but settled for generations in the Holy Land of Al-Hijaz, retain the peculiarity.

I therefore believe the Turi Badawin to be an impure race, Syro-Egyptian,11 whereas their neighbour the Hijazi is the pure Syrian or Mesopotamian.

A wonderful change has taken place in the Tawarah tribes, whilome pourtrayed by Sir John Mandeville as “folke fulle of alle evylle condiciouns.” Niebuhr notes the trouble they gave him, and their perpetual hankering for both murder and pillage. Even in the late Mohammed Ali’s early reign, no governor of Suez dared to flog, or to lay hands upon, a Turi, whatever offence he might have committed within the walls of the town. Now the Wild Man’s sword is taken from him, before he is allowed to enter the gates,12 and my old acquaintance, Ja’afar Bey, would think no more of belabouring a Badawi than of flogging a Fellah.13 such is the result of Mohammed Ali’s vigorous policy, and such the effects of even semi-civilisation, when its influence is brought to bear direct upon barbarism.

To conclude this subject, the Tawarah still retain many characteristics of the Badawi race. The most good-humoured and sociable of men, they delight in a jest, and may readily be managed by kindness and courtesy. Yet they are passionate, nice upon points of honour, revengeful, and easily offended, where their peculiar prejudices are misunderstood. I have always found them pleasant companions, and deserving of respect, for their hearts are good, and their courage is beyond a doubt. Those travellers who complain of their insolence and extortion may have been either ignorant of their language or offensive to them by assumption of superority, — in the Desert man meets man, — or physically unfitted to acquire their esteem.

We journeyed on till near sunset through the wilderness without ennui. It is strange how the mind can be amused by scenery that presents so few objects to occupy it. But in such a country every slight modification of form or colour rivets observation: the senses are sharpened, and the perceptive faculties, prone to sleep over a confused mass of natural objects, act vigorously when excited by the capability of embracing each detail. Moreover, Desert views are eminently suggestive; they appeal to the Future, not to the Past: they arouse because they are by no means memorial. To the solitary wayfarer there is an interest in the Wilderness unknown to Cape seas and Alpine glaciers, and even to the rolling Prairie, — the effect of continued excitement on the mind, stimulating its powers to their pitch. Above, through a sky terrible in its stainless beauty, and the splendours of a pitiless blinding glare, the Samun14 caresses you like a lion with flaming breath. Around lie drifted sand-heaps, upon which each puff of wind leaves its trace in solid waves, flayed rocks, the very skeletons of mountains, and hard unbroken plains, over which he who rides is spurred by the idea that the bursting of a water-skin, or the pricking of a camel’s hoof, would be a certain death of torture, — a haggard land infested with wild beasts, and wilder men, — a region whose very fountains murmur the warning words “Drink and away!” What can be more exciting? what more sublime? Man’s heart bounds in his breast at the thought of measuring his puny force with Nature’s might, and of emerging triumphant from the trial. This explains the Arab’s proverb, “Voyaging is victory.” In the Desert, even more than upon the ocean, there is present death: hardship is there, and piracies, and shipwreck, solitary, not in crowds, where, as the Persians say, “Death is a Festival”; — and this sense of danger, never absent, invests the scene of travel with an interest not its own.

Let the traveller who suspects exaggeration leave the Suez road for an hour or two, and gallop northwards over the sands: in the drear silence, the solitude, and the fantastic desolation of the place, he will feel what the Desert may be.

And then the Oases,15 and little lines of fertility — how soft and how beautiful! — even though the Wady al-Ward (the Vale of Flowers) be the name of some stern flat upon which a handful of wild shrubs blossom while struggling through a cold season’s ephemeral existence. In such circumstances the mind is influenced through the body. Though your mouth glows, and your skin is parched, yet you feel no languor, the effect of humid heat; your lungs are lightened, your sight brightens, your memory recovers its tone, and your spirits become exuberant; your fancy and imagination are powerfully aroused, and the wildness and sublimity of the scenes around you stir up all the energies of your soul — whether for exertion, danger, or strife. Your morale improves; you become frank and cordial, hospitable and single-minded: the hypocritical politeness and the slavery of civilisation are left beh............