I20 Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates, [ch, xx. 



wady, along which Beteyen and his people had tra- 

 velled. An Arab march is slow, even when at its 

 quickest ; and in an hour or so we came upon the 

 stragglers, and then upon the main body. We rode 

 up a height, and from it saw the wonderful sight of 

 twenty or thirty thousand camels, with a propor- 

 tionate number of horsemen and footmen, converg- 

 ing by half-a-dozen winding wadys, towards a 

 central plain commanded by a high tell on which 

 the horsemen were o-atherino;. It was difficult to 

 understand why so vast a host should have been 

 scared by the report of even a thousand horsemen. 

 The plan of campaign, if plan there was, seems to 

 have been to concentrate the forces in an open place, 

 for when first threatened with attack the tribes were 

 scattered in a number of wadys out of sight of each 

 -other, and were in danger of being beaten in detail. 

 ■Still, we cannot yet understand why a body of 

 horsemen equal or superior to that of the Roala was 

 not sent out against them. Every tribe and every 

 .section, on the contrary, retreated with its own 

 escort, and no attempt was made to-day at taking 

 the off'ensive. This has disappointed us, for we 

 expected better things of Jedaan. Our camels are 

 such good walkers that from being last we soon 

 joined the head of the column at which we found 

 Beteyen, mounted, not on his mare as a sheykh 

 should have been at such a moment, but snugly 

 on his delul, with his favourite child in a pannier 

 beside him and a black slave squatting behind. 



