The following day we overtook a considerable tribe of Wahabees coming from Samarcand: we carefully concealed our pipes from them,--for Ebn Sihoud severely prohibits smoking, and punishes any infraction of his laws with death. The Emir Medjioun hospitably entertained us, but could not suppress his surprise at our hardihood in thus placing ourselves at the mercy of the Wahabee, whose ferocious character he depicted to us in the most frightful terms. He did not dissemble that we ran great hazard; Ebn Sihoud’s deceitful promises, which he lavishes without scruple, being no guarantee against the most infamous treachery. The Drayhy himself, full of loyalty, had advanced on the faith of the king’s invitation, his imagination never suggesting the possibility of a breach of promise, and began now to repent his too credulous confidence; but pride prevented his retreating, and we prosecuted our journey. We soon reached the Nedgde, a country intersected with mountains and valleys, studded with nomade camps, and abounding in towns and villages, the former of which appear to be very ancient, and attest a former population much richer and more numerous than that by which they are now occupied. The villages are peopled with Bedouin husbandmen; and the soil produces corn, table vegetables, and dates in abundance. We were told by the inhabitants, that the aborigines had abandoned their country to establish themselves in Africa, under the conduct of one of their princes, named Beni Hetal. We everywhere experienced a warm-hearted hospitality, but heard interminable complaints of the tyranny of Ebn Sihoud, under whose dominion these people seem to be retained by fear alone. At length after fourteen days’ journey, at the pace of our dromedaries, which may be reckoned at triple the distance traversed by a caravan in the same space of time, we arrived in the capital of the Wahabees. The city is surrounded and concealed by a wood of palms, called the Palm-trees of Darkisch, which serves it as a rampart, and is so thickly planted as scarcely to admit the passage of a horseman between the trunks of the trees. Having made our way through these, we came to a second barrier, composed of little hillocks of date-stones, resembling a bank of small pebbles, and behind it the town-wall, along which we rode to the entrance-gate, and, passing through it, soon reached the king’s palace, a large edifice of two stories, built of white hewn stones.