was allowed to elevate his ambition to the treatment of men.
As our travellers continued, as far as possible, to live after the
European fashion, their manners were necessarily as much an object of
curiosity to the Arabs as those of the Arabs were to them. One day two
young men came to see them eat. Of these, the one was a young nobleman
from Sana, whose gentle manners announced a superior education; the
other a young chief from the mountains, whose country was seldom
visited by strangers. This the _naïveté_ and simplicity of his manners
soon rendered manifest. Upon being invited to eat, he replied, “God
preserve me from eating with infidels, who have no belief in God!”
Niebuhr then demanded the name of his country; “What,” said he, “can
my country concern thee? Hast thou formed the design of going thither
to subdue it?” He afterward made several remarks upon their manners,
the simplicity of which excited their laughter; at which the Arab
felt ashamed, and ran away in confusion. His companion fetched him
back, however, and he returned, wondering at the amazing quantity of
food which they devoured. Fowl after fowl disappeared before these
mighty eaters; the poor Arab, who began to entertain awful ideas of
the capacity of a German stomach, and apprehending that they might
bring about a famine in the land, for a while looked on in silent
amazement; but when they had already eaten as much as would, perhaps,
have satisfied a whole tribe of Bedouins, he started up, upon seeing
Von Haven preparing to carve yet another fowl, and seizing him by the
arm, exclaimed, “How much, then, dost thou intend to eat?” This sally
produced still louder peals of laughter than ever, and the poor Arab,
who probably apprehended that they might finish by eating him, rushed
out of the house and disappeared.
Having sufficiently observed whatever was interesting or new at Loheia,
they departed thence on the 20th of February, 1763, their servants and
baggage mounted on camels, and themselves on asses. Not that Europeans
were here, as at Cairo, prohibited from riding on horseback, but that
horses were dear and not easily to be hired, while the asses, though
comparatively cheap, were large fine animals, of easy gait. Arabia, it
is well known, is surrounded by a belt of burning sand, which has in
all ages aided in protecting it from invasion. This our travellers had
now to traverse, but they suffered no particular inconvenience from the
heat, and in four days arrived at _Beit el Fakih_, the greatest coffee
emporium in the world.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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