524 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880- 



Jebel Sidr. There is a small village, with the ruins of a 

 very considerable castle of the Wahhabites. On a little 

 eminence, commanding a fine view of the valley and the 

 northern and western hills, is the cottage of an old Shereef 

 who had been warned to expect us, and came out to 

 receive us with very gracious hospitality. Rugs were 

 brought out, and while the house was cleaned out for 

 our reception, I sat in the shade under a wall, ex 

 changed the usual compliments, and enjoyed the play 

 of the sunlight on the mountain sides, which strongly 

 recalled some of the barer hills of Skye. Beneath the 

 house was a fine acacia, and finding me interested in the 

 names of the different trees in the Hejaz, the old gentle 

 man began to recount with considerable pride the great 

 variety of species. When an Arab speaks of trees, he 

 includes bushes which would hardly pass for trees even 

 in Caithness. Even on this principle, the list is not a 

 long one, but the people make the most of what they 

 possess, and there is scarcely a plant which has not some 

 industrial use. Of trees proper, by far the largest class 

 are the acacias, the different species of which are not easily 

 distinguished by a stranger, and are often confounded 

 even in Arabic lexicons and commentaries on the poets. 

 The commonest species are the salum, the samur, the 

 talh, and the killat. The talh is the tree of the uplands, 

 the killat is distinguished by its hooked thorns, which 

 inflict a smarting wound, and by its whitish bark. The 

 samur has a dark bark, and is more gnarled than the 

 salam, which is the prevailing tree of the lowlands, and 

 also the most useful. It is one of the so-called khabt, 

 or trees whose leaves are beaten off to be eaten by camels, 

 and its wood in addition to those uses yields a brown dye. 

 Throughout my journey I found various trees and shrubs 

 to have a very well defined local distribution, so that my 

 men would often identify a place by specifying what 

 grew at it. I shall, therefore, note from time to time the 

 various plants and their uses, as pointed out to me, 



