i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 519 



with all his might to pillage not only enough for himself, 

 but enough to bribe the travelling inspector, and, if need 

 be, to outbid a rival at Constantinople. This system of 

 pillage is the one thing in which the Turks are successful, 

 and therefore it is not strange that, in the eyes of the 

 Arabs, the Turkish Government means simply an organised 

 robbery. 



IV. WADY FATIMA 



On January 29 we started from Hadda a little before 

 sunrise, and in a few minutes left the Mecca road on our 

 right, and held right up Wady Marr, passing through a 

 belt of Khamt and acacias under which were the tents 

 of a small encampment of the Harb Arabs. From this 

 point the valley is fertile that is, there are springs 

 breaking out at short intervals, each of which fertilises 

 a plot of garden ground, and is usually surrounded by a 

 palm grove. Between the plantations the valley is still 

 a sandy desert. I procured a list of all the wells with 

 their names from the old Shereef at Wady Fatima. They 

 are thirty-three in number, the lowest being the fountain 

 in Hadda and the highest those of Zeima and Wady 

 Leimoon. From Hadda to Zeima was a journey of two 

 days, as we travelled ; but we made considerable halts, 

 and did not keep along the valley the whole way. So 

 it will be seen that for Arabia this is a district remarkably 

 rich in water. Some of the springs are very strong, com 

 parable with the famous fountains of Palestine, and 

 sending forth a stream sufficient to irrigate many acres of 

 soil. The fountain-head is sometimes a large pond thirty 

 or forty feet across, and swarming with tiny fish. Yet 

 I saw the springs at their weakest, for it is three years 

 since a flood has come down the valley. All the springs 

 are private property, and most of them belong to members 

 of the princely house of Mecca. 



That water is treated as property lies in the nature of 



