We usually find an encampment of Bedouins outside the gate. Their tents are worse than any gipsy's, low, smoky, and of the rudest construction. These people are a spectacle of savageness. Their huge heads of shock hair, dyed red and dripping with butter, are garnished with a Firin, or long three-pronged comb, a stick, which acts as scratcher when the owner does not wish to grease his fingers, and sometimes with the ominous ostrich feather, showing that the wearer has "killed his man:" a soiled and ragged cotton cloth covers their shoulders, and a similar article is wrapped round their loins.[18] All wear coarse sandals, and appear in the bravery of targe, spear, and dagger. Some of the women would be pretty did they not resemble the men in their scowling, Satanic expression of countenance: they are decidedly _en deshabille,_ but a black skin always appears a garb. The cantonment is surrounded by asses, camels, and a troop of naked Flibertigibbets, who dance and jump in astonishment whenever they see me: "The white man! the white man!" they shriek; "run away, run away, or we shall be eaten!" [19] On one occasion, however, my _amour propre_ was decidedly flattered by the attentions of a small black girl, apparently four or five years old, who followed me through the streets ejaculating "Wa Wanaksan!"--"0 fine!" The Bedouins, despite their fierce scowls, appear good-natured; the women flock out of the huts to stare and laugh, the men to look and wonder. I happened once to remark, "Lo, we come forth to look at them and they look at us; we gaze at their complexion and they gaze at ours!" A Bedouin who understood Arabic translated this speech to the others, and it excited great merriment. In the mining counties of civilised England, where the "genial brickbat" is thrown at the passing stranger, or in enlightened Scotland, where hair a few inches too long or a pair of mustachios justifies "mobbing," it would have been impossible for me to have mingled as I did with these wild people.