510 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880- 



wider valley dotted with acacias of the kind called salam. 

 This valley is infested with wolves, and we passed the 

 hiding-place of a hunter, a small lair built up with 

 branches, near which a piece of a dead camel had been 

 laid as a bait. In the middle of the valley is the coffee 

 house of Far eye (the upper place), at which we stopped 

 to rest till the heat of the day should decline. The 

 Mecca road is lined with these coffee-houses at short 

 intervals. The Far eye is the third from Jeddah. The 

 soldiers charged with protecting the roads have their 

 post beside these stations, where there is commonly a 

 well. The coffee-house consists merely of a hut of straw 

 or branches, with a stone dais in front, shaded by a 

 veranda, and sometimes an open covered court. The 

 furniture is a row of earthen jars for cooling water, a 

 hearth and apparatus for boiling coffee, hubble-bubbles, 

 and a few mats of plaited straw, which here are generally 

 circular. A mat is spread in the shade for the traveller, 

 and he is served with coffee and a pipe. If any one 

 chooses to stay overnight, he is accommodated with fire 

 wood, and a pot in which to prepare supper. Every 

 thing else he must generally find for himself. At Far eye 

 some of our men took the opportunity to say their prayers, 

 which, in travelling, are put in at convenient seasons, 

 or more frequently omitted altogether. Praying, like 

 the incessant counting of the rosary of divine names 

 with which the Arab fills up intervals of conversation, 

 is viewed as a convenient distraction when one has 

 nothing better to do, and in Taif especially Al Mas 

 improved his leisure by making up considerable arrears 

 of devotion. In a company when talk is lagging, it is 

 quite common for some one to ask the time of day, and 

 on finding that an hour of prayer has arrived, to step out 

 of the circle, spread his upper garment on the floor, and 

 go through the prayers of such a number of rek as. But 

 when business is on hand, the prayers have to give way ; 

 and according to my observation, it is only the prayers 



