employer. Osman passionately demanded of him if it was true that his
wife had saved the life of his deadliest enemy, when in her power. "Most
true, praised be Allah!" replied the Sheikh, drawing himself proudly up,
and presenting a jewel-hilted dagger to the old Bey; "this weapon," he
continued, "was your gift to me in the hour of your favour; had I met
Elfy Bey, it should have freed you from your enemy. Had my wife betrayed
the hospitality of the tent, it should have drank her blood; and now,
you may use it against myself," he added, as he flung it at the
Mameluke's feet. This reverence for hospitality is one of the wild
virtues that has survived from the days of the patriarchs, and it is
singularly contrasted, yet interwoven with other and apparently opposite
tendencies. The Arab will rob you, if he is able; he will even murder
you, if it suits his purpose; but, once under the shelter of his tribe's
black tents, or having eaten of his salt by the wayside, you have as
much safety in his company as his heart's blood can purchase for you.
The Bedouins are extortionate to strangers, dishonest to each other, and
reckless of human life. On the other hand, they are faithful to their
trust, brave after their fashion, temperate, and patient of hardship and
privation beyond belief. Their sense of right and wrong is not founded
on the Decalogue, as may be well imagined, yet, from such principles as
they profess they rarely swerve. Though they will freely risk their
lives to steal, they will not contravene the wild rule of the desert. If
a wayfarer's camel sinks and dies beneath its burden, the owner draws a
circle round the animal in the sand, and follows the caravan. No Arab
will presume to touch that lading, however tempting. Dr. Robinson
mentions that he saw a tent hanging from a tree near Mount Sinai, which
his Arabs said had then been there a twelvemonth, and never would be
touched until its owner returned in search of it.