286 Drinking from & Poisoned Well [1897 



father sent him to me on his way up the Nile, saying that he wished 

 him ' to learn Arabic, to keep a diary, to acquire habits of observation 

 and self-reliance and not to imbibe Jingo principles, also to marry 

 early.' I find the young man excellently disposed to all these things 

 except the last. 



"21st Dec. — I am starting on Christmas Eve for Jebel Attaka near 

 Suez, as I think I am well enough now for desert travelling. Eid, 

 Suliman's young Howeyti cousin, who travelled with us last March 

 to Siwah, and was so good a desert man, is dead. He had joined in 

 a ghazu in the summer beyond Akabah, and, on his way home, being 

 parched with thirst, drank of a well whose property it is to kill the 

 drinker in fourteen days. He reached home alive, but died soon after. 



" 23rd Dec. — Had an audience with the Khedive and took Walter 

 Harris with me. The talk was principally about the Turco-Greek war, 

 as to which Harris gave us some curious details. The King of Greece 

 himself told him that the reason that he left Vasos in Crete was so as 

 to bring about a blockade of the Piraeus. ' I should then,' the King 

 said, ' have been able to tell my people that but for the intervention of 

 the Powers I would have marched with a hundred thousand Greeks 

 to Constantinople. As it turned out, we were not prevented by the 

 Powers and so had to make a war, for which none of us had bargained." 



Abbas afterwards told us of his cousin Prince Aziz's attempt to go 

 to Nejd. The Prince had got as far as Sherm, a small port in the 

 Sinai Peninsula, intending to cross over from there to Moelhi, and 

 then on to visit Ibn Rashid, but the Khedive had stopped him by tele- 

 gram. He was afraid of being compromised in Constantinople by the 

 visit, and was also unwilling that so light-headed a member of the 

 Khedivial family should be the first to visit Nejd after the conquests of 

 old days. Aziz is now at Nakhl, where he is being detained by the 

 Egyptian governor of the fort. 



" Lunched with Rennell Rodd, and called afterwards on Riaz Pasha 

 and on Gorst. Harris was to have started with me to-morrow on my 

 desert trip, but has been prevented." 



The desert trip was a bit of exploration connected with a map I was 

 making of the country between Cairo and the Red Sea. I returned 

 from it on the last day of the year. 



" 12th Jan. 1898. — News has come of the death of Mohammed Ibn 

 Rashid at Hail, ' in his bed,' they say after a seven days' illness. If 

 truly in his bed, he may rank as one of the most uniformly successful 

 of Arabian monarchs. For five and twenty years he has reigned in 

 Nejd, warring every spring upon his neighbours and always victoriously. 

 He has not once been defeated in the field, and has reduced every tribe 

 in succession to his obedience. His only misfortune has been that 

 he has left no son, and his inheritance will probably be disputed between 



