After some days passed in festivities, we continued our journey and approached a river, or rather an arm of the Euphrates, which connects it with the Tigris. Here we were joined by a courier, who in five days had travelled on a dromedary a distance which takes thirty at the pace of a caravan. He came from the district of Neggde, sent by a friendly sheik to warn the Drayhy of the rage into which his projects and alliances had thrown Ebn Sihoud. He despaired of seeing him ever able to make head against the storm, and strongly recommended him to make peace with the Wahabees. I wrote, in the name of the Drayhy, that he felt no more concern about Ebn Sihoud than he should about a grain of mustard; placing his confidence in God, the sole giver of victory. Then, by a diplomatic _ruse_, I gave him to understand that the armies of the Grand Signior would support the Drayhy, who was desirous, above all things, of opening the road to the caravans and delivering Mecca from the power of the Wahabees. The next day we crossed the great arm of the river in boats, and encamped at the other side, in the vicinity of the tribe of El Cherarah, celebrated for its courage, and also for its ignorance and obstinacy. We had foreseen the extreme difficulty of gaining it over, not only on account of these faults, but because of the friendship which existed between its chief Abedd, and Abdallah, the principal minister of King Ebn Sihoud. Accordingly he refused to join the alliance; and in this state of things, the Drayhy, supposing all negotiation useless, declared that the sabre must decide between them. The following day Sahen was sent, with five hundred cavalry, to attack Abedd. He returned in three days, having taken one hundred and forty camels, and two mares of great value: eight men only were killed, but a great number wounded on both sides. I witnessed on this occasion a very extraordinary cure. A young man, a relation of Sahen, was brought back, having his skull broken by a stroke of the djerid, seven sabre wounds in the body, and a lance still fixed in his side. The extraction of the lance was immediately set about, and it was brought out from the opposite side: during the operation the patient turned to me and said--“Do not distress yourself about me, Abdallah, I shall not die;” and extending his hand, he took my pipe and began smoking as tranquilly as if the seven gaping wounds had been in another body. In about twenty days he was completely cured, and was on horseback as before. The only medicine they gave him was camel’s milk mixed with fresh butter, and his only food was dates dressed in butter. Every third day his wounds were washed in camel’s urine. I doubt if a European surgeon, with all his apparatus, would have made so complete a cure in so short a time.