Page:Mount Seir, Sinai and Western Palestine.djvu/89

Rh right side of the valley, and presently the cause was revealed when a “covey” of the partridges were started by us amongst the rocks. They are a little smaller than the English partridge, and differ in colour and general appearance, being light reddish-brown on the back and speckled white and brown on the breast; the beak is bright yellow. They seldom take the wing; but when startled either lie close to the ground, which they greatly resemble in colour, or run up the banks or rocks with great speed, and try to hide themselves.

During our long rides we often beguiled the way with a song, a cigarette, or a scrap of conversation. Amongst all our party there was no one such an adept at the latter art as Ibraham, our dragoman. He was a strict Mohammedan, and had done haj (or pilgrimage) to Mecca; and from having seen so much of the world could spin his yarn by the hour. Often I have been amused to watch him and Bernhard Heilpern riding side by side, the former keeping up a brisk conversation, to which the other had only to reply by an occasional grunt, or nod of assent. One day, after one of these tête-à-têtes (which were always in Arabic), Ibraham came to me, and says, “Mr. Bernhard, sir, he be very good man; he want to improve the costumes (customs) of these Bedawins.”

“Why,” I replied, “does he want them to wear trowsers? I fancy a Bedawin in trowsers would be no longer a Bedawin.”

“No, sir, he wants the Bedawin to settle down and cultivate the ground, but Bedawin will not do that.” (Ibraham always spoke of the Arabs with mingled contempt and pity.) “I say to our sheikh, ‘You be very poor peeble here; you have very little to eat and very little cloths. Why you no go to Cairo and get some land; then you grow crops and get rich?’. ‘If I go to Cairo and take land I have to pay for it. If I lose my crops I have to pay all the same or go to prison. If wicked Bedawin come and kill other Bedawin on my land, he go off, but I be killed, or go to prison for life. If wicked Bedawin steal a donkey of other Bedawin on my land, I have to pay for the donkey, or go to prison. I don't want to go to prison, or to pay for my land. Here (looking around) I have no master; I be free. Nobody can put me in prison in the desert.’”

It is to be feared that with such strong arguments against settling down as an agriculturalist in Egypt before him, there is not much hope that the Arab of the desert will fulfil the hopes of good Bernhard.