On Saturday, The 3rd September, The Hateful Signal-Gun Awoke Us At One
A.M. In Arab Travel There Is Nothing More Disagreeable Than The Sariyah
Or Night-March, And Yet The People Are Inexorable About It.
“Choose early
Darkness (daljah) for your Wayfarings,” said the Prophet, “as the
Calamities of the Earth (serpents and wild
Beasts) appear not at Night.”
I can scarcely find words to express the weary horrors of the long dark
march, during which the hapless traveller, fuming, if a European, with
disappointment in his hopes of “seeing the country,”
[p.68] is compelled to sit upon the back of a creeping camel. The
day-sleep, too, is a kind of lethargy, and it is all but impossible to
preserve an appetite during the hours of heat.
At half-past five A.M., after drowsily stumbling through hours of outer
gloom, we entered a spacious basin at least six miles broad, and
limited by a circlet of low hill. It was overgrown with camel-grass and
Acacia (Shittim) trees, mere vegetable mummies; in many places the
water had left a mark; and here and there the ground was pitted with
mud-flakes, the remains of recently dried pools. After an hour’s rapid
march we toiled over a rugged ridge, composed of broken and detached
blocks of basalt and scorić, fantastically piled together, and dotted
with thorny trees. Shaykh Mas’ud passed the time in walking to and fro
along his line of camels, addressing us with a Khallikum guddam, “to the
front (of the litter)!” as we ascended, and a Khallikum wara, “to the rear!”
during the descent.
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