512 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880- 



have given their names to these cairns lived in Jeddah 

 and Mecca respectively. Each started to carry a burden of 

 his wares to the other town, and on meeting they boasted, 

 without adding the ordinary &quot; If God will,&quot; that their 

 wares would still be hot when they reached their destina 

 tion. They had scarcely parted when they were struck 

 dead for their impiety, and the stone heaps mark their 

 graves. Not far from this, beside a deserted coffee-house, 

 lay the scene of an adventure which befell Ismail a 

 fortnight before. Returning from Mecca, and travelling, 

 as is customary, by night, without any other attendant 

 than his donkey boy, he was attacked with stones by a 

 party of robbers. The robbers had guns, but did not 

 dare to use them from fear of alarming the patrol, and they 

 finally made off when Ismail succeeded in giving one of 

 them a severe blow. He was very indignant, however, 

 and had now brought his gun, in the hope of having a 

 chance of revenge. The police, inefficient as usual, had 

 got no trace of the robbers, and the story having got 

 abroad, few people cared to travel at night, except in 

 strong companies. 



Beyond Far eye, the first inhabited place is the negro s 

 coffee-house, from which the road descends into an open 

 plain, running down to the coast in a course a little 

 S. of W. We have pierced the first hilly barrier that 

 separates Jeddah from the interior, and join the natural 

 road leading up to the Nejd, along the great valley of 

 Wady Marr, which drains this part of the Hejaz. In 

 Kiepert s map you will find the valley marked as Wady 

 Bahra. This is not a name, but merely means the Wady 

 in which the village of Bahra lies a considerable hamlet, 

 situated at the point where the road from Jeddah, des 

 cending obliquely in a line southward of E., reaches the 

 axis of the valley and bends somewhat to the northward. 

 Bahra is the half-way house between Mecca and Jeddah, 

 twenty miles distant from either city, and a favourite 

 halting-place for camel trains. Though the village is 



