Page:The Northern Ḥeǧâz (1926).djvu/186

 against traveling to the south, because, he said, many marauding gangs, both large and small, were wandering about there. Seeing that I did not intend to abandon my plan, he offered to accompany me himself as far as his encampment near the spring of ar-Rawjân, and he said that there he would find me a reliable guide to the territory of the Ḥwêṭât and Beli. In the further course of the conversation I gathered that he would not allow me to pass through his territory without his permission, because several times he remarked that the Sultan ruled in Constantinople, but that he was the one who ruled on his own pastures and that Ḥarb eben ʻAṭijje and the mudîr from Tebûk were still more insignificant in his eyes than the Sultan. To my question as to when I could start he replied that I should make all preparations for departure, that he would go with his people for salt to the salt marsh of al-Mamlaḥ northeast of Tebûk, and that on the next day he would return and take me with him. About his pay he said nothing. When he was leaving, I told Ǧwâd to go with him and ask him how much he would expect me to give. Ǧwâd returned with the sad news that Daʻsân demanded fifty Turkish pounds ($ 225) and had declared that if he did not get as much as he wanted he would not take me with him and would not allow me to pass through his territory. As his territory bordered on the northern edge of the ḥarra (tract of country covered with lava), I could not reach the territory of the Ḥwêṭât and the Beli by any other way. It was accordingly necessary for me either to fulfil his desire and to go with him or else to cross the frontier of his territory before he returned to his camp. From Tebûk it would take us at the most two days to reach the spring of ar-Rawjân in the vicinity of which Daʻsân’s clan was encamped and for this journey Daʻsân demanded fifty Turkish pounds! In his camp I should have been completely dependent upon him, and I feared that he would have demanded fresh money both for himself and for the new guide and would thus have rendered it impossible for me to continue my journey. The craving for gold and for profit was already aroused both in the mudîr, the representative of the chief Ḥarb eben ʻAṭijje, and in Daʻsân, and it was therefore necessary for me to get away as quickly as possible. I sent each of these three persons a trifling gift as a bait and prepared to shift my quarters to the quarantine.