Page:The journal of the Royal Geographic Society of London. Volume 34, 1864. (IA s572id13663720).pdf/344

134 occasionally met with even in European stables; good beasts, but not of the pure race.

Nor must I at present give, though I should much desire, a detailed account of the past history or present condition of the Wahhabee government, often called “Nejdean” the Arabs, in allusion to the provinces of its centre and birth-place. Enough to say that Feysul, Ebn-Turkee, Ebn-Abd-Allah, Ebn-Saood, the seventh in regular succession of these rulers, now extends his dominion over the whole of the lower Kaseem, the districts of Soleyyel, Wadi Dowasir, Aflaj, Woshem, Aared, Sedeyr, Yemamah, Hareek, Hasa, and Kateef; the islands of Bahreyn also, though not strictly speaking subject, yet pay him an annual tribute. His empire, accordingly, as a glance at the map will show, stretches in a broad belt across the centre of Arabia from the very limits of the Meccan territory, Kelaat-Bisha, and Wadi Nejran, up to the shores of the Persian Gulf. Its limits are assigned northward by the independent kingdom of Telal Ebn-Rashid and the territory of Koweyt, on the south-east by the kingdom of ’Oman, due east the Persian Gulf, south the desert; and to the west Djebel Aseer, the Meccan limits, and the pilgrim-route as far back as Medinah. It is the strongest and most closely organised, though not the richest or most populous (for ’Oman surpasses it in either of these respects) kingdom in Arabia at the present day; and though it has never fully recovered from the blow inflicted by Ibrahim Basha and the Egyptian occupation, it is yet very formidable to its Arab neighbours, and even an object of much suspicion and uneasiness to the Osmalee at Mecca.

South-west of Djebel Toweyk, beginning at the province of Aflaj, and terminating near Kelaat-Bischa, runs a long and broad valley, known by the name of Wadi Dowasir. Its inhabitants are numerous, but poor, half savage; and an inhospitality unusual in Arabia renders them of singularly ill repute. They are the most bigoted among the bigoted Wahhabites. Their villages are small, and dotted at short intervals down the sandy valley, their houses for the most part mere palm-leaf huts, thus affording an indication of the increased heat of the climate, corroborated by the dusky complexion of the people themselves. This valley opens out at its south-western extremity into Wadi Nejran, and thus affords a sort of high road, the only one indeed, from Nejed to the interior of the Yemen, passing behind Djebel Aseer and the sea-coast range. Such was the information given me by many trustworthy informants of those regions. I myself did not visit it in person, though I was near its upper end in the Aflaj; indeed as the murder of a tobacco-smoker (or “drinker of the shameful,” in their cant-phrase) is throughout the Wadi Dowasir looked on as a highly meritorious action, I should have been in a somewhat