DEATH OF ACHMED. 207 



he approved or disapproved the creed in which his son 

 was dying, thus announced in his last breath. Achmed 

 gazed into his father's eyes longingly and steadfastly, as 

 if seeking some approval or dissent; but finding neither, 

 the smile on his countenance changed to a look of anxi- 

 ety, even of pain, and then he stretched his tall form on 

 the floor, and without sigh or moan or utterance of any 

 kind the son of the desert was dust like the old dust 

 around him. 



" In the afternoon the Alaween dug a grave for their 

 dead brother in the burial-place of his people, and, wrap- 

 ping around him the clothes in which he died, they car- 

 ried him out to burial. The procession was not large. 

 The women rent 'the air with their occasional shrill cries, 

 but this was only formality. He had left no wife or chil- 

 dren, and his father was too old to mourn for such events. 

 Seven tall sons had he buried like this one, and the 

 eighth grave was filled up in the afternoon sunlight." 



The night was far advanced before we were tired of 

 talking. By midnight the hotel had sunk into a profound 

 silence, though more than seven hundred persons were 

 sleeping in it and the surrounding buildings. We should 

 have talked the night through if the Doctor had not in- 

 terrupted us with a stentorian snore. So we made our 

 camp on the floor and the diwans, and the morning sun, 

 coming over Eagle Cliff, caught us there. 



