Page:The journal of the Royal Geographic Society of London. Volume 34, 1864. (IA s572id13663720).pdf/331

Rh of the winds, which wrinkle the surface of the sand in every direction, till the whole desert presents the likeness of a fiery ocean after some months of a steady monsoon, suddenly ruffled by a brisk gale.

Such is the lightness of the sand, especially southward, that a camel’s track is often effaced almost as soon as imprinted, though the poor animals have been sinking up almost to the knees in their laborious way. Sand-storms, much resembling the dust-storms of Northern India, are not uncommon here; but, as for the stories of moving columns of sand, and whole caravans thus suddenly whelmed in an arenaceous grave, all the Bedouins whom I met laughed at them downright, and declared them to be mere travellers’ tales. Certainly in a pretty long experience of the desert, exactly in the hottest summer months and over so much of its extent, I saw nothing of the kind.

Mirage, with all its capricious freaks, is never wanting. Once, and once only, we fell right in with the deadly simoum, and had more than enough leisure for observing its strange phenomena. But I must reserve their description for another occasion.

Of the Bedouin tribes which frequent these deserts, and their accompanying “Nefood,” I may be here excused from giving a detailed account; the subject is very long, and not entirely new. Their catalogue is, briefly, as follows:—The Scherarat (very savage beings), the Howeytat, Benoo Atiyeh, and the marauding Bisher, to the north; besides occasional visitors of the Syro-Arabic tribes, such as the Roo’alah, Teiyyahah, Sakr, Woold-Alee, &c. &c. Further east by south we meet with the numerous clan of Shomer, the Montefik, the Mesaleekh, and the dreaded Benoo-Lam; down the west, southwards, the Ma’az, Harb, an ancient and a very troublesome tribe, and Kahtan; while in the more central regions I found the Sebaa’ (different from those of the same denomination in Syria), Meteyr (a wealthy tribe), ’Oteybah, and the inhospitable Dowasir, or Aal-Amār; lastly, in the east itself, the ’Ajman, Benoo Khalid, a wide-spread clan, and Benoo Hajar. These tribes are of varying number and strength, but their total aggregate does not exceed 400,000 souls; such, at least, is the conclusion which we arrived at on summing them up in cyphers, after counting them separately, tribe by tribe. There exist among them interminable subdivisions and varieties of name and kindred; but all, or almost all, belong to the main clans here mentioned. Enough of this for the present; in Central Arabia a more interesting and a newer field awaits us.

However, before I finally quit the desert for the steppes and villages of the inhabited land, it will be well to add a few words about the great Southern Arabian desert, the “Dahna ” itself. It reaches from Katar and ’Oman on the east, to the Yemen and