252 Adballah Provides Letters [1897 



so far away. A cousin of Abdallah's, one Ali, who accompanied me 

 on horseback as far as this camp, has given me particulars of the 

 arrangement made and tells me that i't is necessary, inasmuch as the 

 Arabs of the Jebel Akhdar bitterly hate all of European race, whereas, 

 if presented as a relation of Hajji Batran, who had married a hatherieh, 

 townswoman, of Dernah, I should be accepted as a relation. The Han- 

 nadi, he explained, were of the Beraza clan, the same as the Harabi. 

 There was a son Naif born to Batran; and I must personate him. I 

 do not like this. But Ali said there was real danger in going among 

 people so wild as his mountain kinsmen ; and he besought me to be 

 content with Siwah, and to turn back from there by the sea-coast 

 route to Mariut. I am, however, in 'the mood for an adventure, 

 dangerous or not." [N.B. It will be seen that these letters of Abdal- 

 lah, whatever their precise nature, were unfortunately conceived, and 

 brought about the misunderstanding which led to the attack made on 

 me at Siwah.] 



" We are encamped five miles from Kasr-el-Jibali in a bit of tamarisk 

 underwood well screened from the wind, at the outmost edge of Nile 

 irrigation in the direction of the Oases — how happy to be at last alone ! 

 The Nile wa'ter reaches no farther westwards. A little run of it feeds 

 the last fields, which are of wheat, barley, and helbeh (a sort of clover). 

 On the helbeh Yemama is turned out to graze, and the camels eat it 

 brought in to them. The two new camels have arrived, sturdy little 

 beas'ts of the Western type, brown both, and rough haired — not beau- 

 tiful, but good. The men, too, are of a wholly other type from that 

 east of the Nile. Suliman and his two Howeytat companions have 

 almost a look of breeding contrasted with them, while Ali's mare, of 

 which he is proud, as being of western blood, is a plain barb, hones'tly 

 shaped, but of no distinctive type. Beauty is the natural gift, to desert 

 man and desert beast, only of peninsular Arabia. 



" 12th Feb. — Abdallah appeared again last night, having been pre- 

 ceded by his younger son, a pleasant youth of mixed 'type — the son 

 of his jari (concubine) Salem said — who had dined with me. Though 

 grown up, the young man has never seen more of the world than 

 Medinet el Fayoum and El Wah, not even Cairo or the Nile. Abdallah 

 has a separate establishment with the boy's mother close by here. He 

 and I embraced affectionately at parting. He has done everything in 

 his power to further my wishes about the journey and has brought 

 seven or eight letters which he has written to various persons on my 

 route, including the most important of all, one to Sidi Abu Seyf, the 

 head prior of the Jerabub monastery, Senussi's right hand. He has 

 entrusted me to old Beseys, who is one of the confraternity, and who 

 is to explain to Abu Seyf how matters stand wi'th me religiously. ' Abu 

 Seyf,' Abdallah said, ' is as my own heart to me, and he will treat you 



