woollen tents, low and black, of the true Badawin, mere dots in
the boundless waste of lion tawny clays and gazelle brown
gravels, and the camp fire dotting like a glow worm the village
centre. Presently, sweetened by distance, would be heard the wild
weird song of lads and lasses, driving or rather pelting, through
the gloaming their sheep and goats; and the measured chant of the
spearsmen gravely stalking behind their charge, the camels;
mingled with bleating of the flocks and the bellowing of the
humpy herds; while the reremouse flitted overhead with his tiny
shriek, and the rave of the jackal resounded through deepening
glooms, and--most musical of music--the palm trees answered the
whispers of the night breeze with the softest tones of falling
water.

And then a shift of scene. The Shaykhs and "white beards" of the
tribe gravely take their places, sitting with outspread skirts
like hillocks on the plain, as the Arabs say, around the camp
fire, whilst I reward their hospitality and secure its
continuance by reading or reciting a few pages of their favourite
tales. The women and children stand motionless as silhouettes
outside the ring; and all are breathless with attention; they
seem to drink in the words with eyes and mouths as well as with
ears. The most fantastic flights of fancy, the wildest
improbabilities, the most impossible of impossibilities, appear
to them utterly natural, mere matters of every day occurrence.
They enter thoroughly into each phase of feeling touched upon by
the author: they take a personal pride in the chivalrous nature
and knightly prowess of Taj al-Muluk; they are touched with
tenderness by the self sacrificing love of Azizah; their mouths
water as they hear of heaps of untold gold given away in largesse