i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 505 



sits his radeef, or after-rider, the camelman Marzook. 

 It is an awkward perch, for the hind-quarters of a camel 

 slope away at a considerable angle, and the second rider 

 has to hold fast by the pommel, while his legs dangle on 

 either side, or more often are gathered up and twisted 

 together in one of the innumerable Oriental forms of 

 squatting. Now I understand why that pommel takes 

 the shape of a pillar, which, to one s first experience, 

 seems specially contrived to dig into the rider s back. 

 Without it the second rider would infallibly slide off. 

 And the radeef is an ancient and established institution 

 in Arabia, so much so that in the old Pagan kingdoms 

 the mayor of the palace, who wielded the actual power, 

 as in the Merovingian kingdom in France, was regularly 

 known by this name. Marzook is of the great Oteibe 

 tribe, from the Nejd, a true son of the desert, speaking 

 a far purer Arabic than even Mohsin, very fond of his 

 camels, whose heads he fondles and kisses as they lie 

 ruminating at the halt ing -place, but a little shy at first 

 towards strangers. We got very good friends soon, for 

 I liked his honest, weather-beaten face, with something 

 of a hawk-like keenness of expression in spite of the loss 

 of one eye, and he took very kindly to me after a dis 

 cussion about the true Arabic name of a woman s camel 

 litter, in which I sided with him and gained the point 

 with a quotation from old Imrulqais. The word in 

 question (ghabeet) was known to none of the other men, 

 but among the Oteibe it is still the term for the litter 

 used by a Sheikh s daughter, just as it was twelve hundred 

 years ago. In his dress Marzook had nothing of the style 

 affected by the regular members of the Shereef s retinue. 

 A short dirty tob bound by a girdle, and leaving his bare 

 legs uncovered from the knee, a coarse red head shawl, 

 and in cold weather, a rough brown cloak, did not distin 

 guish him from an ordinary wanderer of the desert. But he 

 had adopted one innovation of the civilised cities he wore 

 a pair of drawers, which the common Bedouin never does. 



