i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 509 



melons, and even with patches of the coarse millet called 

 dokhn. This dokhn, named from its dark or smoky 

 appearance, is a favourite food of the poorer classes, 

 and, unlike its rival, the white or red millet (dura), is 

 an ancient Semitic grain, being mentioned under the 

 same name in the Old Testament. It is interesting to 

 note that the names of the principal kinds of cereals, 

 wheat, barley, millet, lentils, are older than the differentia 

 tion of the Hebrew and Arabic languages. They are 

 the same in both languages, and in a form which shows 

 that they are not loan words. But in early times the 

 nomadic Arabs must have consumed far less cereal food 

 than the agricultural peoples of Canaan. And so the 

 word which in Hebrew means bread, but which radically 

 denotes the solid or consistent part of food in contrast to 

 the fluid water, has in Arabic the sense of flesh. Even 

 now the wilder Bedouin seldom tastes bread ; but in 

 many Arabic - speaking countries, not merely in Egypt, 

 as is usually stated, but equally in the Hejaz, the in 

 creased importance of cereal food has stamped its mark 

 on the language, and bread is called e e&quot;sh that is, life. 



After Reghame the face of the country changes. Low 

 but rugged hills of basalt and other igneous rocks rise 

 before us, and the road winds between ranges of crumbling 

 rock in a sandy glen, without any considerable rise of 

 level. Vegetation now increases, and the path is bordered 

 with the broom-like markh, used by the Arabs for making 

 cordage. Before the days of flint and steel the markh 

 had another use, which is registered in the native Arabic 

 lexicons, but now, as far as I have been able to hear, is 

 remembered only in the Soudan, where Ismail, as a little 

 boy, saw a very old man produce fire by rubbing two 

 pieces of this wood together. The mountains increase 

 in height, and to the left opens the dreaded Robbers 

 Gate, through which the northern predatory tribes are 

 wont to descend on the Mecca road. In something over 

 another hour we cross a slight eminence, and enter a 



