Bada plain. The adjacent valleys were dotted with she-camels and
their colts. The adult animal here sells for twelve to thirty
dollars. During the cotton-full in Egypt, and the cotton-famine
of the United States, they fetched as many pounds sterling at the
frontier; and the traders of El-Wijh own to having made two
hundred per cent., which we may safely double. I asked them why
they did not import good stallions from the banks of the Nile;
and the reply was that of the North Country--the experiment had
ended in the death of the more civilized brutes. This is easily
understood: the Baliyy camel seems to live on sand.

The camp was visited by a few Bedawi stragglers, and the reports
of their immense numbers were simply absurd. The males were not
to be distinguished, in costume and weapons, from their
neighbours; and the "females" were all dark and dressed in
amorphous blue shirts. At last came an old man and woman of the
Huwaytat tribe, bringing for sale a quantity of liquefied butter.
They asked a price which would have been dear on the seaboard;
and naively confessed that they had taken us for pilgrims,--birds
to be plucked. But sheep and goats were not to be found in the
neighbourhood: yesterday we had failed to buy meat; and to-day
the young Shaykh, Sulayman, was compelled to mount his dromedary
and ride afar in quest of it. The results were seven small sheep,
which, lean with walking, cost eleven dollars; and all were
slaughtered before they had time to put on fat.

During our stay a pitiable object, with a hide- bandaged lower
leg, often limped past the tents; and, thinking the limb broken,
I asked the history of the accident. Our hero, it appears, was a
doughty personage, famed for valour, who had lately slipped into