meetings, which might in other circumstances lead to a closer acquaintance. The day that we entered the South Country, several such appeared, who had nothing in particular to say, but who seemed to scan our party with an eye to business. One savage-looking fellow followed the dragoman and myself some distance, as we had dismounted from our camels, and were walking in the rear of the train. He was well armed, and as I looked back over my shoulder, I had the pleasing consciousness that he was a robber, who, if I had been alone, might have entered at once on the practice of his profession. Perhaps he was merely a scout for some larger party — "prospecting," as miners would say — taking in the situation so as to report to his master; or ready, if a good chance offered, to do a little stroke of business "on his own hook." After following us an hour, he rode off, whether to report to some robber-chief that the Howadjis were coming, we could not tell, though we had our suspicions the next day.
That night the dragoman informed us that we were now fairly in the enemy's country, and must set a watch for the night. It was the first time since leaving Suez that we had found such precautions necessary, though the officer in command at Nukhl had sent a file of soldiers to mount guard before our tents. We knew that there were Bedaween in the neighborhood: for some of our party saw at a distance the smoke of a camp-fire, and scarcely had we pitched our tents before we heard on a hill not far away the barking of a dog! How that sound startled us in the silence of the wilderness! This, we thought, did not come from an encampment, but from a village, as we had seen in the afternoon children driving little donkeys loaded with water-skins, which they had filled at some spring. We saw also a small patch of cultivated ground. These signs of habitation raised a mingled feeling: for we knew not whether
