We Continued To Descend By A Gentle Slope, And At Six Hours And A Half Entered Wady Samghy [Arabic], Coming

From the south, in which we descended N.E. At the end of eight hours and a half we left

This valley and turned E. into a side one, called Boszeyra [Arabic]; where we halted for the night, at eight hours and three quarters.

We had met in Wady Samghy two old Bedouins of the Mezeine tribe, who belong to the Towara nation: they were fishermen, on their way to the sea to exercise their profession. One of them carried in a small sack a measure of meal which was to serve for their food on shore, the other had a skin of water upon his shoulder; they were both half naked, and both approaching to seventy years of age. One of them was deaf, but so intelligent that it was easy to talk with him by signs; he had established a vocabulary of gestures with his companion, who had been his fishing partner for ten years, and who was one of the shrewdest and hardiest Bedouins I had ever seen; in his younger days he had been a noted robber,

[p.497] and in attempting to carry off the baggage of a French officer in the Sherkyeh province in Egypt, he was seized, laid under the stick, and so severely beaten, that his back had from that time become bent; but notwithstanding this misfortune and his age, he had lost none of his spirits, and his robust constitution still enabled him to cross these mountains on foot, and to exert his activity whenever it was required. These two men partook this evening of my supper; they of course asked me where I was going, and shook their heads when I told them I was bound for Akaba.

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