European had as yet travelled down by Harun al-Rashid’s and the Lady
Zubaydah’s celebrated route through the Nijd Desert.

Not a moment, however, was to be lost: we expected to start early the
next morning. The boy Mohammed went forth, and bought for eighty
piastres a Shugduf, which lasted us throughout the pilgrimage, and for
fifteen piastres a Shibriyah or cot to be occupied by Shaykh Nur, who
did not relish sleeping on boxes. The youth was employed all day, with
sleeves tucked up, and working like a porter, in covering the litter
with matting and rugs, in mending broken parts, and in providing it
with large pockets for provisions inside and outside, with pouches to
contain the gugglets of cooled water.

Meanwhile Shaykh Nur and I, having inspected the water-skins, found
that the rats had made considerable rents in two of them. There being
no workman procurable at this time for gold, I sat down to patch the
damaged articles; whilst Nur was sent to lay in supplies for fourteen
days. The journey is calculated at eleven days; but provisions are apt
to spoil, and the Badawi camel-men expect to be fed. Besides which,
pilferers abound. By my companion’s advice I took wheat-flour, rice,
turmeric, onions, dates, unleavened bread of two kinds, cheese, limes,
tobacco, sugar, tea and coffee.

Hamid himself started upon the most important part of our business.
Faithful camel-men are required upon a road where robberies are
frequent and stabbings occasional, and where there is no law to prevent
desertion or to limit new and exorbitant demands. After a time he

[p.52] returned, accompanied by a boy and a Badawi, a short, thin,
well-built old man with regular features, a white beard, and a cool