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

.'CH. XVII.] An Oasis, 37
it. It was bitterly cold in spite of all our cloaks
^nd wraps, and we were chilled to the bone. Thus
we struggled on for about ten miles, when we came
to the head of the valley, where there stood the
Tuins of a tower ; and here we again hit upon the
€aravan road, and, immediately afterwards, on ]\Iohammed,
who had been all over the country lookingfor
us
and, by his account, must have ridden something
like forty miles.
what he said Avas true.
His white mare looked as if
He told us that the hills to
our right were the Jebel Amiir, noted for robbers,
and wished us to push on to Arak, another village
some way in front of us, but we have had enough of
struggling against the wind for to-day, and having
come to a place where there is sufficient shelter, we
have stopped. It is horribly cold, and the poor
beasts will have a sad night of it.
March 29.—A good watch was kept all night by
Mohammed and Ghanim, who never seems to sleep
except sometimes on one of the camels in
the daytime,
and we made an early start, the wind less
violent
than yesterday, and no longer in our faces.
At twelve we got to Arak. Like Sokhne, it is
a wretched little place, containing perhaps fifty
houses, and surrounded by a mud wall, which looks
a,s
if a man determined to get in might easily push
it down.
Arak's raison d'etre appears in a spring of
indifferent water, sufficiently abundant to irriga.te
some dozen acres of land, now green with barley.
It would seem, according to Mohammed, that
there