volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

Al-Kutayyifah. 177
very glad to see each other. He seemed to think that
I might be the " Franji " he was told to bring back to
Damascus, but Muhammad said that this was quite
impossible, because the British Consul himself had ordered
him to take me to Mosul, and had ridden out with
us nearly as far as the village of 'Adra. After a
little further conversation he became quite convinced
that Muhammad was right, and when he returned to
Mr. Dickson he reported that he had found no " Franji
at Tudmur. Mr. Dickson described this incident to me
in a letter which I received at Mosul a few weeks later.
For the first few miles our road lay through gardens
and fields, but after we passed Kubbat al-'Asafir {i.e.,
the " dome of the birds ") all vegetation seemed to
disappear suddenly, and sand and stones took its place.
About one o'clock we halted, and whilst we were near the
Kubbah a man rode up on a camel bringing a white
paper parcel which he handed to me. On opening it
I fotmd a small weU-bound pocket Bible, and a note
from Miss Butchart saying that the Book would protect
me in my journey across the desert. When we went
on again the road became tortuous and rocky. We
rode through the vaUey of Jabal Abu'l-'Ata with Jabal
al-Kam on our right. At 3.30 the road began to open
out, and at 4.15 we stopped at the vUlage of Al-Kutayyifah^
for the night. We pitched our tent weU away
from the houses, but it proved to be a very ineffective
protection from the cold evening and the bitterly cold
night. Several people from the village came out to
watch me making tea and boiling rice for my supper,
and brought me a mass of dried desert herbs for the
fire. In the course of the evening Muhammad told me
that Karyaten was twenty hours distant, and asked
me if I felt able to ride there in one day. Having a
lively recollection of the heat we had experienced that
day, and knowing that our road would he through stony
barren country I said no, and we decided to stop at
'Utni, which we could reach in five or six hours, and to
^ See Yiut ,k iv, p. 144, and Mukaddasi, p. 190.