cH. XXI.] Hundred & Fifty TJiousand Camels. 137 



yards away from a tent. Sheep there were none, 

 however, except high up on the slopes of the sur- 

 rounding hills, and we were struck by tlie compa- 

 ratively small number of the mares. Camels seemed 

 everything, and of these herd after herd we passed 

 through, of a hundred, and five hundred, and a thou- 

 sand strong. The tents themselves are smaller than 

 those of the Sebaa, and only the Sheykh's is an 

 imposing one. It is set on nine poles, and is per- 

 haps a hundred feet from end to end. Of creature 

 comfort, however, it is as destitute as the rest of 

 them. A bit of carpet and a few camel saddles are 

 all its furniture, with two tall coffee-pots and a 

 coffee ladle, two yards long set upon wheels. Per- 

 haps a hundred people were seated in the tent. A 

 little dark-faced man of aljout thirty, much pitted 

 with small-pox and Avearing a pink cotton kefiye, 

 received us as we dismounted, and with some diffi- 

 culty we recognised in him tSotamm ibn Shaalan, 

 the Sheykh of the Roala. 



The family of Ibn Shaalan, though not accounted 

 of the oldest nobility, has nevertheless the greatest 

 hereditary position of any in the Desert. Sotamm 

 can boast that by right of birth he rules over a 

 population of at least twenty thousand souls, and 

 can bring five thousand men into the field. How 

 the family first acquired its position I have not 

 been able to find out, but they have held it now 

 for so respectable a number of generations, that the 

 sheykhdom is hereditary with tliem, the Ibn Jeudals 



