i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 517 



to ransom ; and if it appears that more of the Harb than 

 of the Oteibe fell in the fight, the latter tribe will have 

 to pay blood money for the balance. Whether all the 

 recent robberies are the work of the Oteibe is not yet 

 known, and perhaps will never appear. Meantime there 

 has been good rain in the upper country, and the dis 

 persed Oteibe were beginning to return homewards before 

 I got back to Jeddah. A good season, which may now be 

 looked for, will allay the turbulence of the tribes ; and 

 whether or no, people are too well accustomed to the 

 insecurity of the desert to make more than a nine days 

 wonder of any act of Bedouin rapine. 



The state of the roads is a good measure of the weak 

 ness of the Turkish power in the Hejaz, which, practically 

 speaking, exists for no other public purpose than to keep 

 the roads to Mecca and Medina open. Other provinces 

 are held for profit, and remit an annual revenue to Con 

 stantinople, after providing for the maintenance of local 

 government. But the Hejaz is said to cost the Sultan 

 200,000 a year more than it produces, and absorbs a 

 great part of the surplus revenues of Syria and Yemen. 

 The Turks are much more devout than the Arabs, and 

 have a high veneration for the Holy Places, and the 

 Ottoman Sultans are ready to pay this price for the honour 

 of figuring as protectors of the Caaba and patrons of the 

 pilgrimage. The money goes less for the maintenance 

 of troops and public officers than in payment of pensions 

 and innumerable allowances of grain, partly to descendants 

 of the Prophet and others who can in some way claim 

 connection with the service of Caaba, and partly to the 

 Bedouins who might obstruct the progress of the pilgrim 

 age caravans. With this vast outlay, with garrisons at 

 Mecca, Medina, and Jeddah, and armed forts along the 

 road, it might fairly be expected that the roads would be 

 absolutely safe. Yet the short route of forty miles 

 between Mecca and Jeddah is in the state which I have 

 described. Even the Waly does not pass over it without 



