A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 515 



round huts of palm branches woven over a frame of 

 poles. The pilgrims regularly halt here on their way to 

 and from Mecca, and the huts are let out to them at an 

 exorbitant figure. We, however, as the night was warm 

 preferred to take up our quarters under the veranda of 

 the coffee-house. Our baggage was piled up on the ground 

 and the camels lay round it. The veranda was laid 

 with mats, to which our men added a mattress and rugs 

 for my bed, while they formed a circle on the ground 

 beneath. Al Mas got out his favourite sheeshe (water- 

 pipe), coffee was called for, and all settled down for supper 

 and a long talk. Of an evening the Arabs are excessively 

 garrulous, and when several parties meet at such a way 

 side station as Hadda the talk goes on almost all night 

 the interlocutors falling out one by one as sleep over 

 powers them. New arrivals continued to come in till 

 long after midnight, but as the custom is to travel by 

 night and rest by day, the larger caravans which felt 

 strong enough to brave robbers only halted to drink 

 coffee and get the latest gossip. The news was all about 

 the robber bands. We had scarcely settled down when 

 an almost naked muleteer came. in. His party of six 

 had been attacked by five men quite near the village and 

 stripped of everything. Ismail, full of his own quarrel 

 seized his rifle, and was off at once to join the police of 

 the station, but they took the matter much more coollv 

 and disappointed his hopes of revenge by insisting that 

 it was better to wait till morning, though the full moon 

 would have served them almost as well as daylight In 

 fact, there is no very strong feeling in the Hejaz against 

 highway robbery. It is the duty of the Government to 

 keep the Bedouins quiet by allowances of money and 

 gram, and when the roads become very insecure it is 

 generally the case, or, at least, it is generally asserted 

 that these payments are in arrears. The bandits who 

 the roads are sometimes regular outlaws wild 

 men who have their retreat in the mountains. But at 



