DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.12665#0133
Personnel of the arabs, 117
civility, is the most contemptible thing that crawls ;
but in a wild Arab it was intolerable. I really-
despised him, and made no secret of it; and some*-
times, rash and imprudent as was the bare thought,
it was with the greatest difficulty that I could keep
from giving him my foot. After he had gone out
that night, Paul sewed twenty gold pieces in the
collar of my jacket, and I left the rest of my money
open in my trunk.
I have frequently been astonished at the entire
absence of apprehension which accompanied me
during the whole of this journey. I fortunately
observed, at the very first, an intention of exag-
gerating its danger ; and this and other little things
carried me into the other extreme to such a de-
gree, that perhaps my eyes were closed against
the real dangers. Among all the pictures and de-
scriptions of robbers and bandits that I have seen>
I have never met with any thing so unpreposses-
sing as a party of desert Arabs, coming down upon
the traveller on their dromedaries; but one soon
gets over the effect of their dark and scowling
visages ; and, after becoming acquainted with their
weapons and bodily strength, a man of ordinary
vigour, well armed, feels no little confidence in
himself among them. They are small in stature,
under our middle size, and thin almost to emacia-
tion. Indeed, the same degree of spareness in
Europeans would be deemed the effect of illness
or starvation ; but with them it seems to be a mere
drying up of the fluids—or, as it were, an attraction
VOL. It.—Ji
civility, is the most contemptible thing that crawls ;
but in a wild Arab it was intolerable. I really-
despised him, and made no secret of it; and some*-
times, rash and imprudent as was the bare thought,
it was with the greatest difficulty that I could keep
from giving him my foot. After he had gone out
that night, Paul sewed twenty gold pieces in the
collar of my jacket, and I left the rest of my money
open in my trunk.
I have frequently been astonished at the entire
absence of apprehension which accompanied me
during the whole of this journey. I fortunately
observed, at the very first, an intention of exag-
gerating its danger ; and this and other little things
carried me into the other extreme to such a de-
gree, that perhaps my eyes were closed against
the real dangers. Among all the pictures and de-
scriptions of robbers and bandits that I have seen>
I have never met with any thing so unpreposses-
sing as a party of desert Arabs, coming down upon
the traveller on their dromedaries; but one soon
gets over the effect of their dark and scowling
visages ; and, after becoming acquainted with their
weapons and bodily strength, a man of ordinary
vigour, well armed, feels no little confidence in
himself among them. They are small in stature,
under our middle size, and thin almost to emacia-
tion. Indeed, the same degree of spareness in
Europeans would be deemed the effect of illness
or starvation ; but with them it seems to be a mere
drying up of the fluids—or, as it were, an attraction
VOL. It.—Ji