A pilgrimage to the temples and tombs of Egypt, Nubia, and ...

ABABDE ARABS. 220
year perished in the murrain that has committed
such ravages among the horned cattle of Egypt.
These Ababde Arabs possess the district of the
Eastern Desert, stretching from the Second Cata-
ract to Esneh, where the dominion of the other
great tribe of Bedouins, the Beni Ouasel Arabs,
commences, and reaches to Suez. The Ababde
chief, a splendid-looking man, who boasts of
being of a royal race, and whose sovereignty over
his tribe is absolute, came to see us this morning,
and with true Arab hospitality invited us to visit
him in the Desert, promising us dromedaries for
the journey, and an escort to protect us. This
we could not accept, but we rode out, accompanied
by jNIonsieur d'Arnault, to see his encampment
at the entrance of the Desert, and there we found
such a little wandering colony as one may
imagine formed the suite of Abraham when he
came down into Egypt. These Ababdes, when
they come into the vicinity of a village or town
like Korosko, comply so far with civilized cus-
toms as to put on an Arab shirt, but in the
Desert they wear nothing but a long strip of
cotton cloth wound round their loins. They
never cover their heads, and the manner of dress-
ing their hair is most extraordinary and absurd.
They frizzle it out to an enormous size, exactly