io8 Bedouin Tribes of the Etiphrates. [ch. xx. 



young man mounted on a ratlier sliowy colt, which 

 he told us was a Jilfan Stam el bdulad, and he 

 introduced himself as a son of Mijuel the Mesrab, 

 who is well known at Damascus as the husband of 

 an English lady. He was extremely polite, invited 

 us to his tent and begged us if we went to Damascus, 

 to go to his father's house. His tribe, the Mesrab, is 

 a very small one, and moves about with the Gomussa, 

 having hardly a separate existence, if it is not 

 indeed part of the Gomussa or Eesallin. The sheykh, 

 Mijuel's elder brother, a funny little old man of 

 anything but distinguished appearance, we met later 

 in Beteyen's tent. The young man himself goes 

 every winter with the tribe to the Hamdd, but 

 spends the summer at Damascus or Homs, in either 

 of which towns his father has a house. As regards 

 his ste23mother we have constantly heard her 

 spoken of in the desert, and always in terms of 

 respect. She is a charitable person, and a provi- 

 dence to her husband's people, supplying them with 

 money, arms and everything they require. Mijuel 

 himself is talked of as a supremely fortunate man, the 

 possessor of boundless wealth, though some think 

 his marriage a mesalUancc, as the lady is not of 

 Arab blood, consequently not asil (noble). 



Presently after this, we came upon Beteyen, whose 

 tent was being pitched in a wady, the entrance to 

 some broken hilly ground lying north of our line of 

 march. Here we alighted. There is water some- 

 where close by, in another of the series of pools I 



