DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.12664#0268
HABITS OF THE BEDOUINS. 255
something from us, but it was not much ; merely
some bread and a charge of powder. Not far from
the track we saw, hanging on a thorn-bush, the
black cloth of a Bedouin's tent, with the pole,
ropes, pegs, and every thing necessary to convert it
into a habitation for a family. It had been there
six months ; the owner had gone to anew pasture-
ground, and there it had hung, and there it would
hang, sacred and untouched, until he returned to
claim it. " It belongs to one of our tribe, and
cursed be the hand that touches it," is the feeling
of every Bedouin. Uncounted gold might be ex-
posed in the same way, and the poorest Bedouin,
though a robber by birth and profession, would pass
by and touch it not.
On the very summit of the mountain, apparently
ensconced behind it as a wall, his body not more
than half visible, a Bedouin was looking down
upon us, and one of my party, who had long kept
his face turned that way, told me that there was
the tent of his father. I talked with him about his
kindred and his mountain home, not expecting,
however, to discover any thing of extraordinary in-
terest or novelty. The sons of Ishmael have ever
been the same, inhabitants of the desert, despising
the dwellers under a roof, wanderers and wild men
from their birth, with their hands against every
man, and every man's hand against them. <£ There
is blood between us," says the Bedouin when he
meets in the desert one of a tribe, by some indi-
vidual of which an ancestor of his own was killed,
perhaps a hundred years before. And then they
something from us, but it was not much ; merely
some bread and a charge of powder. Not far from
the track we saw, hanging on a thorn-bush, the
black cloth of a Bedouin's tent, with the pole,
ropes, pegs, and every thing necessary to convert it
into a habitation for a family. It had been there
six months ; the owner had gone to anew pasture-
ground, and there it had hung, and there it would
hang, sacred and untouched, until he returned to
claim it. " It belongs to one of our tribe, and
cursed be the hand that touches it," is the feeling
of every Bedouin. Uncounted gold might be ex-
posed in the same way, and the poorest Bedouin,
though a robber by birth and profession, would pass
by and touch it not.
On the very summit of the mountain, apparently
ensconced behind it as a wall, his body not more
than half visible, a Bedouin was looking down
upon us, and one of my party, who had long kept
his face turned that way, told me that there was
the tent of his father. I talked with him about his
kindred and his mountain home, not expecting,
however, to discover any thing of extraordinary in-
terest or novelty. The sons of Ishmael have ever
been the same, inhabitants of the desert, despising
the dwellers under a roof, wanderers and wild men
from their birth, with their hands against every
man, and every man's hand against them. <£ There
is blood between us," says the Bedouin when he
meets in the desert one of a tribe, by some indi-
vidual of which an ancestor of his own was killed,
perhaps a hundred years before. And then they