i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 499 



wish than immediately to squat on a rug and &quot; take your 

 rest (isterih),&quot; smoking and drinking coffee. Moreover, 

 the Arab is little impressed by scenery. He describes 

 a country by the mountains, which are his landmarks, 

 the fountains or waterholes at which he fills his leathern 

 water sack, and the vegetation by the wayside. His one 

 enthusiasm in scenery is for orchards and gardens. A 

 city embowered in orchards is his ideal of a beautiful 

 landscape. Damascus is an image of paradise, and Taif 

 the fairest scene in the Hejaz. I think it was the same 

 among the ancients, at least among the practical Romans. 

 The idea of beauty and interest in scenery was not 

 developed, except in connection with cultivation and 

 subserviency to man s uses. I suppose that all nations 

 have passed through a stage of the same kind, and that 

 the pure love of landscape, apart from associations of 

 utility and comfort, is a late growth. With the Arab 

 it is certainly a general law that his interest and curiosity 

 is reserved for the affairs of man, and that nature is 

 attractive in proportion as man has laid his hand on it. 

 But for anything that has human interest, the Arab s 

 curiosity is insatiable. He is an inexhaustible story 

 teller, and never weary of listening to the most trivial 

 anecdote of another s adventures. Story-telling and such 

 books of history and travel as fall under the category of 

 story-telling form the one kind of literature in which 

 the Arabs have really excelled ; and in personal inter 

 course with Arabs one s chief amusement and instruction 

 are to be found in the same direction. I could not have 

 had a better attendant than Ismail for drawing out our 

 escort and the people with whom we met. He had seen 

 enough of our countrymen to enter readily into the 

 spirit of my inquiries, and he got the people to talk with 

 a freedom that would have been impossible to me by my 

 self. Moreover, I could always get him to explain what 

 I did not understand, which very few Arabs have patience 

 to do. His own knowledge of the Bedouins was con- 



