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Updated: August 4, 2024
A little to the south-west lies a kind of ossuary, a tumulus slightly raised above the wavy level, and showing a central pit choked with camels' bones: at least, we could find no other. And here I was told the Arab legend by the Wakil; who, openly deriding the Bedawi idea that the building could be a "Castle," opined that it was a Kanisah, a "Christian or pagan place of worship."
Up the rough steps of the bed the camel-men drove their beasts; and the name of a Gujrati maker, printed upon a sack of Anglo-Indian canvas, had a curious effect among such Bedawi surroundings.
'Why need he seem a Christian? asked Rashîd. 'Because all cooks who go with English travellers are Christians, was the earnest answer, 'and because no man would ever think to find a Bedawi beneath a Christian's cloak. 'A person of my master's standing ought to have a cook, murmured Rashîd, as one who thought aloud.
At six a.m. we rode down the Shuwak valley, again noting its huge constructions, and then striking away from it to the left, we passed over a short divide of brown hill, where the narrow Pass was marked only by Bedawi graves. The morning showed a peculiar rainbow, if a bow may be called so when no rain appeared; a perpendicular stripe, brilliant enough, and lasting at least twenty minutes.
The surveyors doubtless found difficulty in obtaining the Bedawi names for the several features, which are unknown to the citizens of the coast; but they might easily have consulted the only authorities, the Jerafin-Huwaytat, who graze their flocks and herds on and around the mountain. As usual in Arabia, the four several main "horns" are called after the Fiumaras that drain them.
From Urfa to Nisibin there can be fields again. The climate has not changed, and wherever the Bedawi pitches his tents and scratches the ground there is proof of the old fertility.
We were disappointed, by the sinister wind, in our hopes of collecting a bottle of rain-water for the photographer; nor did the storm, though it had all the diffused violence of a wintry gale, materially alter the weather. The only Bedawi tradition concerning the Bada' plain is the following.
Where it is of a purely Bedawi barbaric type, as in the emirates of central Arabia, it does well enough; but if the population be contaminated ever so little with non-Arab elements, practices, or ideas, Arab administration seems incapable of producing effective government. It has had chances in the Holy Cities at intervals, and for longer periods in the Yemen.
And like the citizens, they hate our manner of travelling: they love to sit up and chat through half the night; and to rise before dawn is an abomination to them. At first their manners, gentle and pliable, contrast pleasantly with the roughness of the half-breds, Huwaytat and Maknawi, who have many of the demerits of the Fellah, without acquiring the merits of the Bedawi.
This cairn of brick-coloured boulders buttressing the right bank has, or is said to have, the Memnonic property of emitting sounds Yarinn is the Bedawi word. The boomings and bellowings are said to be loudest at sunrise and sunset. The "hideous hum" of such subterraneous thunderings is alluded to by all travellers in the Dalmatian Island of Melada, and in the Narenta Valley.
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