boughs of tolh trees: where we see the trail of boughs in the khála, it is a sign of the nomad menzils. Of these they made a sheeppen before the beyt; and the small cattle were driven in and folded for the night. They call it hathira; "Shammar, they said, have another name [serifat]. The host now set before us a great dish of rice.

3

Eyâd was treacherous, and always imagining, since he had his wages, how he might forsake me: the fellow would not willingly go to Hâyil. "Khalil, shall I leave thee here? wellah the thelûl is not in plight for a long journey." "Restore then three reals and I will let thee go.' -"Ah! how may I, Khalil? you saw that I left the money at home." "Then borrow it here."—"Bless me! which of these Aarab has any money, or would lend me one real?". All this I said at Kheybar, that thou wouldst betray me; Eyâd, thou shalt carry me to Hâyil, as thou art bounden."-"But here lies no way to Hâyil, we are come out of the path; these Aarab have their faces towards the Auájy, let us go on with them, it is but two marches, and I will leave thee there.' The ill-faith of the Arabs is a gulf, in the path of the unwary! there is nothing to hope for in man, amongst them; and their heaven is too far off, or without sense of human miseries. Now I heard from this wretch's mouth my own arguments, which he had bravely contradicted at Kheybar! On the morrow Eyâd would set out with the rising sun: I said, we will remain here to-day, as thou didst desire yesternight and obtain of me. But he loaded! and then the villanous rafîk came with his stick, and it was that he had learned in the Turkish service threatened to beat me, if I did not remove; but he yielded immediately. In this menzil I found a Solubby household from Wady es-Suffera, which is spoken of for its excessive heat, in the Hejâz, not much north of Mecca. They were here above three hundred miles from home; but that seems no great distance to the land-wandering Solubba. The man told me that when summer was in, they would go to pitch, alone, at some water in the wilderness: and (having no cattle) they must live then partly of venison. "You have now asked me for an eye-medicine, can you go hunting with blear eyes?"-"It is the

young men (el-eyyal) that hunt; and I remain at home." I went further by a tent where the Heteymy housewife was boiling down her léban, in a great cauldron, to mereesy. I sat down to see it: her pot sputtered, and she asked me, could I follow the spots with my eyes upward? "For I have heard say, that the Nasâra cannot look up to heaven." Harshly she chid 'my unbelief and my enmity to Ullah'; and I answered her nothing. Then she took up a ladleful of her mereesy paste, poured samn 3 on it, in a bowl, and bade the stranger eat, saying cheerfully, "Ah! why dost thou continue without the religion? and have the Lord against thee and the people also; only pray as we, and all the people will be thy kindred." - Such were the nomads' daily words to me in these deserts.

4

The morning after, when the messenger had not returned, we loaded betimes. The sun was rising as we rode forth; and at the camp's end another Bishr householder bade us alight, for he had made ready for us no common morrow's hospitality; but his dish of rice should have been our supper last evening. Whilst we were eating, a poor woman came crying to me, 'to cure her daughter and stay here, — we should be her guests; and she pretended she would give the hakim a camel when her child was well.' Eyâd was now as iniquitously bent that I should remain, as yesterday that I should remove; but I mounted and rode forth: we began our journey without water. The guest must not stretch the nomad hospitality, we could not ask them to fill our small girby with the common juice of the earth; yet when hosts send to a weyrid they will send also the guest's water-skin to be filled with their own girbies.

5

We journeyed an hour or two, over the pathless mountains, to a brow from whence we overlooked an empty plain, lying before us to the north. Only Merjàn had been here once in his childhood; he knew there were waterpits yonder, and we must find them, since we had nothing to drink. We descended, and saw old footprints of small cattle; and hoped they might lead to the watering. In that soil of plutonic grit were many glittering morsels of clear crystal. Merjàn, looking upon the landmarks, thought bye and bye that we had passed the water; and my rafiks said

they would return upon the thelûl to seek it. They bade me sit down here and await them: but I thought the evil in their hearts might persuade them, ere they had ridden a mile, to leave me to perish wretchedly. - Now couching the thelûl, they unloaded my bags. "The way is weary, they said, to go back upon our feet, it may be long to find the themeyil; 1 and a man might see further from the back of the thelûl." "I will look for the water with you."-"Nay, but we will return to thee soon. "Well go, but leave with me thy matchlock, Eyâd; and else we shall not part so." He laid down his gun unwillingly, and they mounted and rode from me.

billah! I an Auájy shot against the Auájy, and if I dealt so with mine own kinsmen, what would I not do unto thee?" -"How then might I trust thee?" Merjàn: "Thou sayest well, Khalil, and this Eyâd is a light-headed coxcomb. Among the Aarab, friends will bite at friends thus, betwixt their earnest and game, and it is well taken. Evâd: "Come, let us sit down now and drink tobacco; for we will not journey all by day, but partly, where more danger is, in the night-time. Go Merjan, gather stalks, and let us bake our bread here against the evening, when it were not well to kindle a fire." The lad rose and went cheerfully; for such is the duty of the younger among wayfaring companions in the khála.

***

ROBERT BRIDGES (1844

THE DOWNS 2

O bold majestic downs, smooth, fair and lonely;

O still solitude, only matched in the skies:

Perilous in steep places,

Soft in the level races,

1 shallow water-hole 2 Reprinted from the Poetical Works of Robert Bridges by permission of John Murray, London, publisher