Wanderings in Arabia, Volume 2Duckworth, 1908 - Arabian Peninsula |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
Aarab Abdullah Ageylies alighted Amân Amm Mohammed Aneybar Aneyza Annezy answered Arabian Arabs asked bade basalt Beduins Beduw Bessàm beyt booths Boreyda Bosra bye and bye camels caravan cattle clay coffee cried cursed desert Dowla drink dromedary el-Kasîm Emir enquired et-Tâyif Eyâd friends Galla ghrazzu girby hakîm Hàmed hand Harb hareem Harra Hásan hast Hâyil heard Heteymy hour Ibn Rashid Ibrahîm Jeyber Jidda journey kâfily kafir Kahtân kahwa Kasîm Kenneyny khála Khalil Khey bar Kheybar looked Lord Maatuk matchlock Mecca Medina menzil Merjàn Meteyr morrow Moslemîn mountain Muharram Nasâra Nasrâny Nefûd negro Nejd Nejûmy night nomads palms Pasha passed poor quoth rafîks religion returned ride rode Sâlem Sâlih sand seen Seyl Sherîf sheykh sitting stranger sûk Tâyif thee thelûl thither thou told town Ullah village Wady Waháby weary wellah wilderness word young Zâmil
Popular passages
Page 55 - ... The silver fishes glance beneath, and white shells lie at the bottom of this water world. I have watched there the young of the thob shining like scaly glass and speckled : this fairest of saurians lay sunning, at the brink, upon a stone ; and ofttimes moving upon them and shooting out the tongue he snatched his prey of flies without ever missing. — Glad were we when Jummar had filled our girby of this sweet water.
Page 110 - ... themselves, and with these pains are at rest; the fore bulk-weight is sustained upon the zora; so they lie still and chaw their cud, till the morning sun. The camel leaves a strange (reptile-like) print (of his knees, of the zora and of the sharp hind quarters), which may be seen in the hard wilderness soil after even a year or two. The smell of the camel is muskish and a little dog-like, the hinder parts being crusted with urine; yet is the camel more beautiful in our eyes than the gazelles,...
Page 232 - If one live any time with the Arab he will have all his life after a feeling of the desert." He had experienced it himself, the test of nomadism, that most deeply biting of all social disciplines, and for our sakes he strained all the more to paint it in its true colours, as a life too hard, too empty, too denying for all but the strongest and most determined men. Nothing is more powerful...
Page 55 - Oh, what bliss to the thirsty soul is in that sweet light water, welling soft and warm as milk, [86° F.] from the rock ! and I heard the subtle harmony of Nature, which the profane cannot hear, in that happy stillness and solitude. Small bright dragon-flies, azure, dun and vermilion, sported over the cistern water ruffled by a morning breath from the figgera, and hemmed in the solemn lava rock. The silver fishes glance beneath, and white shells lie at the bottom of this water world. I have watched...
Page 287 - The town now before my eyes ! after nigh two years' wandering in the deserts, was a wonderful vision. Beside our way I saw men blasting the (granite) rock for building-stone. — The site of Tayif is in the border of the plutonic steppe, over which I had lately journeyed, a hundred leagues from el-Kasim. I beheld also a black and cragged landscape, with low mountains, beyond the town. We fell again into the road from the Seyl, and passed that lukewarm brook ; which flows from yonder monsoon mountains,...
Page 277 - More bystanders gathered from the shadowing places: some of them cried out, "Let us hack him in morsels, the cursed one! what hinders? — fellows, let us hack him in morsels!" — "Have patience a moment, and send these away.
Page 110 - The great brutes fall stiffly, with a sob, upon one or both their knees, and underdoubling the crooked hind legs, they sit ponderously down upon their haunches. Then shuffling forward one and the other fore-knee, with a grating of the harsh gravel under their vast carcase-weight, they settle themselves, and with these pains are at rest ; the fore bulk-weight is sustained upon the zora ; so they lie still and chaw their cud, till the morning sun.
Page 175 - ... We sit at leisure at the European board, we chat cheerfully; but such at the Arabs' dish would be a very inept and unreasonable behaviour ! — he were not a man but an homicide, who is not speechless in that short battle of the teeth for a day's life of the body. And in what sort (forgive it me, O thrice good friends ! in the sacrament of the bread and salt,) a dog or a cat laps up his meat, not taking breath, and is dispatched without any curiosity, and runs after to drink ; even so do the...
Page 214 - I heard then a silver descant of some little bird, that flitting over the desert bushes warbled a musical note which ascended on the gamut! and this so sweetly, that I could not have dreamed the like.
Page 40 - Jidda where are Prankish consuls ! But you shall find these worthies, in the pallid solitude of their palaces, affecting (great Heaven !) the simplicity of new-born babes, — they will tell you, they are not aware of it ! But I say again, in your ingenuous ears, "Jidda is the staple town of the Turkish slavery, OR ALL THE MOSLEMIN ARE LIARS.