[p.264] sarcastic emphasis. That trait was enough. The others mounted, and left us quietly to sleep.
I have been diffuse in relating this little adventure, which is characteristic, showing what bravado can do in Arabia. It also suggests a lesson, which every traveller in these regions should take well to heart. The people are always ready to terrify him with frightful stories, which are the merest phantoms of cowardice. The reason why the Egyptian displayed so much philanthropy was that, had one of the party been lost, the survivors might have fallen into trouble. But in this place, we were, I believe,despite the declarations of our companions that it was infested with Turpins and Fra Diavolos,as safe as in Meccah. Every night, during the pilgrimage season, a troop of about fifty horsemen patrol the roads; we were all armed to the teeth, and our party looked too formidable to be cruelly beaten by a single footpad. Our nap concluded, we remounted, and resumed the weary way down a sandy valley, in which the poor donkeys sank fetlock-deep. At dawn we found our companions halted, and praying at the Kahwat Turki, another little coffee-house. Here an exchange of what is popularly called chaff took place. Well, cried the Egyptian, what have ye gained by halting? We have been quiet here, praying and smoking for the last hour! Go, eat thy buried beans,[FN#5] we replied. What does an Egyptian boor know of manliness! The surly donkey-boy was worked up into a paroxysm of passion by such small jokes as telling him to convey our salams to the Governor of Jeddah, and by calling the asses after the name of his tribe. He replied by foul, unmannered, scurril taunts, which only drew forth fresh derision, and the coffee-house keeper laughed consumedly,
[p.265] having probably seldom entertained such funny gentlemen.
Shortly after leaving the Kahwat Turki we found the last spur of the highlands that sink into the Jeddah Plain. This view would for some time be my last of
Infamous hills, and sandy, perilous wilds;
and I contemplated it with the pleasure of one escaping from it. Before us lay the usual iron flat of these regions, whitish with salt, and tawny with stones and gravel; but relieved and beautified by the distant white walls, whose canopy was the lovely blue sea. Not a tree, not a patch of verdure was in sight ; nothing distracted our attention from the sheet of turquoises in the distance. Merrily the little donkeys hobbled on, in spite of their fatigue. Soon we distinguished the features of the town, the minarets, the fortificationsso celebrated since their honeycombed guns beat off in 1817 the thousands of Abdullah bin Saud, the Wahhabi,[FN#6] and a small dome outside the walls.