Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates Vol 2 - The Search For Mecca

CH. XXI.] The Rodla move Camp. 147
AVe liave seut our mares cand donkeys for water
to the lulls wliicli rise north of the plain, here
called " Jebel Euak," where there is a spring of
excellent water, Bir Shedeli, and they have not
yet returned, though all the Eoala tents are do\vii
and the march begun. Sotamm out of politeness
kept his own tent standing to the last, Init now he
cannot wait any longer, and has come to wish us
good-bye. AVc are to meet him again to-night or
to-morrow, but he has to see his tribe across the
liills first, and will then join us on the road, and go
with us to Damascus. I watched him riding away
with a few followers, and four mares, and a delul
with her foal, which he is taking as gifts to the
Pasha. The mares were nothing very remarkable.
Now they are all gone.
It is
a very curious feeling to perceive the plain
gradually emptied of its inhabitants (we can still
watch them streaming by half-a-dozcu different
passes up the hills),
and to find all this tumultuous
camp suddenly fallen into silence, and ourselves
alone in the desert. Except the trampled pasture,
there is not a trace of the people who are gone, for
the Arabs leave nothing behind them,
not even the
scraps of paper one finds in Europe after a pic-nic.
Only two camels, probably of those lately captured
and too lame to go further, remain for the next
person who likes to appropriate. One of them
Ghanim is very anxious to drive off and sell at
Damascus, but this Wilfrid will not allow.