CHAPTER XV I.

CHASE RESUMEDA RASCAL THE RIVER BUFFALOES SNAKES

THE BARRIER

HOW TO EAT PRISON FARE THE RASCAL AGAIN VOICE OF THE NIGHT

BUT

HURRAH! -RIDING HIGH HORSE-FREE

UT once out of sight of the huts, and when I had just begun a little song of lonely triumph, the crowd came running in pursuit, calling for "bakshish," and very urgent too. I chose out four men of the company, and promised to pay them as a body-guard. In a moment they emerged from their clothes, dashed into the stream, and then ran along the opposite bank. This was to keep me to themselves.

The two parties accompanying me, on different sides of the river, and having different objects, soon quarrelled. The four men on the west bank, who were naked and could swim the numerous lagoons that now branched around the river, called out to me, "Sook! sook!" that is "Pull! pull!" so as to make me go faster on, and thus enable them to return before the sun set. They wished to earn their payment as soon as they could. The others, however, on the east bank, who were delayed by carrying their clothes and clubs and ox-goads-some of them also being girls-commanded me to go slower, by

an unceasing cry of "Awash-awash-awashawash!" (no doubt a continuous form of "Shweich.") They wished to delay my progress and to extract money the while. This disturbance was an unlooked-for trouble and difficulty. It prevented me from making careful notes of the river's course in this interesting part of its channel, unseen by any other traveller, or, at all events, undescribed.

It was evident, too, that I was still not free, yet I determined to press on, resolved, if I could only get rid of the men, I would cheerfully sleep in the wildest part of the marsh, trusting for better times to-morrow.

The men on the east bank were more angry and insolent as the current ran swifter. Baroda ! again was the cry, and two of them pointed their guns at me as before. One of these men, whose weapon was as tall as himself, did this at least twenty times in succession, and always called out "Bakshish!" while he brought up his gun to his cheek.

Now my purse was already empty, except of about a shilling, and though they wanted my watch I determined that at any rate for that my pistol might fairly be used in defence, because an Arab who would rob a traveller of his watch would have no scruple about putting "out of the way" the only witness against him who would be certain to compel the robber to deliver back the booty through the Pasha.

The man's repeated menace and pointing of the gun became so common a thing that I speedily got used to the action, and at last, on one occasion, when the muzzle of the long barrel was very close, I moved it aside with my paddle. After this he stopped, and all on his side

It is not very difficult to understand how a soldier becomes used to bullets in the battle. I do not think that courage is either increased or

with him. Luckily they had come to where a deep lagoon intercepted their progress, and with clothes or guns they could not well swim across this, so I was now more free to observe the river.

Here it was level with the marsh, and much of its volume was lost by flooding aside into branches. The main branch turned and twisted exceedingly, and was now only twenty feet wide at the little group of huts called Zweer, out of which another set of men rushed forth, diminished by experience, but that it is entirely congenital in kind and degree. Daring or boldness may be called forth by frequent use of them with immunity, or coolness by finding its extreme value, or by desire to sustain reputation, or these may be lessened by experience enforcing caution; but that seems to be because experience enables one man to dare more as he finds the danger less, and forces another to dare less when he finds that the danger is more than he thought at first. A man can learn what to fear most, but to fear is born in him. A poodle and a mastiff are different even from their puppyhood.

2 This is evidently the last dwelling in the marsh. Thomson states that

and several of them with guns. However my four nude aides-de-camp talked to these neighbours, and they allowed us to go on, and half a dozen of the new comers swam with the others and easily kept pace with the boat. The swimmers raised a long sharp cry together, calling over and over a word I could not make out, but which was evidently meant as a warning. a warning. Yamoos! Yamoos! they shouted, pointing to a dangerous sweep of the stream where six or seven large buffaloes were immersed in the water, and only their heads appeared, and horns and round staring eyes.

In my first canoe voyage, when the Rob Roy and the 'Rothion' began the river Meuse, we met a large herd of bullocks swimming across the stream, and at first sight they looked formidable, but it was soon perceived that they were far more afraid of our canoes than we need be of their horns. Still these were not wild oxen, and we had allowed them room to retreat, whereas the buffaloes in the Jordan were come of a turbulent stock not famed for politeness, and perhaps now they might decline to give way, or they might even attack.

At any rate the men were unaccountably careful to keep off. I ordered them all to stop perfectly quiet, and then the Rob Roy floated gently through the group of horns and eyes, and not one of the buffaloes did anything worse than to stare.1

he had a list of thirty-two villages in the plain, but they were all movable huts, and there was not a "house" in any of them.

3 This canoe is the Earl of Aberdeen's, and she went for a week with the Rob Roy on her voyage to the Danube. The Rothion afterwards crossed the English Channel at night (being the first canoe to perform that feat), under the management of the late Hon. J. Gordon, one of the best oarsmen, best rifle-shots, best canoeists, and best of Christians.

• St. Willibald, in the eighth century, speaks of the buffaloes of Hooleh, as "wonderful herds, with long backs, short legs, and large horns; all of

The river forked out now into six different channels. The guides disputed as to which was best, but every one was hopelessly bad, and with all our care-the men working splendidly to help me-the Rob Roy became firmly entangled in a maze of bushes eight feet high. The men bravely pulled us through, but only to get her fixed again in the thickset stumps and reeds and thorny branches which studded the marsh exactly as they had been represented to me so graphically in the

tent.

To the utmost possible limit of this I hauled and pushed and punted the Rob Roy, but there was an end to further progress except by getting out. The men standing round, and up to their middles in the water, were amazed to see me also jump into the river.

Immediately there was a sharp twinge at my leg, like the cut of a lancet, and only then I recollected what I had been warned of so often-water snakes.5 But it was merely a leech. There are thousands of these in a pond above Banias, and men catch them for sale by dipping their limbs in the water. It is evident now that there

are leeches also in Jordan.

Upon a deliberate survey of the little horizon around me, it was perfectly clear that no boat, or even a reed raft, or a plank, could get through the dense barrier

them are of one colour," and that they immersed themselves in the marshes except their heads (Robinson, vol. iii. p. 342, note). Thomson (vol. i. p. 384) seems to consider that the "behemoth" of Job meant the buffalo, and that the land of Uz may be reasonably supposed to be that east of Hooleh, the name of which might be derived from Hul, the brother of Uz.

5 May not these be alluded to in the words of Moses-"Dan shall be a serpent by the way, an adder in the path, that biteth the horse heels, so that his rider shall fall backward" (Gen. xlix. 17)? One of the mounds in the morass is called Tell Hay, the "hill of snakes."