“Our caravan, while all this had happened, and it only lasted about five minutes, had formed itself into a square, and the camels were kneeling down, as we could plainly see from where we were. I hardly expected the horsemen to do as we asked, but the man who seemed to be their leader at once let us walk on (a process causing me acute pain), and followed with the others to the caravan. We found Mohammed and the rest of our party entrenched behind the camels with their guns pointed, and as we approached, Mohammed stepped out and came forward. “‘Min entum?’ (Who are you?) was the first question. “‘Roala min Ibn Debaa.’ ‘Wallah?’ (Will you swear by God?) ‘Wallah!’ (We swear). “‘And you?’ ‘Mohammed ibn Arûk of Tudmur.’ “‘Wallah?’ ‘Wallah!’ ‘And these are Franjis travelling with you?’ ‘Wallah! Franjis, friends of Ibn Shaalan.’ “It was all right; we had fallen into the hands of friends. Ibn Shaalan, our host of last year, was bound to protect us, even so far away in the desert, and none of his people dared meddle with us, knowing this. Besides, Mohammed was a Tudmuri, and as such could not be molested by Roala, for Tudmur pays tribute to Ibn Shaalan, and the Tudmuris have a right to his protection. So as soon as the circumstances were made clear orders were given by the chief of the party to his followers to bring back our mares, and the gun, and everything which had been dropped in the scuffle. Even to Wilfrid’s tobacco-bag, all was restored.” The robbers and the travellers fraternized after the affair was over, and the former were very much ashamed of themselves for having used their spears against a woman. Lady Blunt apologizes for them, however, as the Bedouin dress she wore for riding prevented them distinguishing her sex in the confusion of the sudden attack. Two days after the encounter in the desert the party arrived at Jôf, where they spent three days, and found the people very hospitable. Their chief servant and camel-driver, Mohammed, was an Arab, who had distant connections in this part of Arabia; and as tribal kinship, no matter how remote, is regarded as a matter of great importance, this relationship was of material aid in securing them the good-will of the inhabitants. The Blunts were less favorably impressed with Jôf than was Palgrave, who, however, uses the term “Djowf” in a broader sense, as including a number of oases situated in “a large oval depression of sixty or seventy miles long by ten or twelve broad, lying between the northern desert that separates it from Syria and the Euphrates, and the southern Nefood, or sandy waste, and interposed between it and the nearest mountains of the Central Arabian plateau.” Lady Blunt writes of it: “Jôf is not at all what we expected. We thought we should find it a large cultivated district, and it turns out to be merely a small town. There is nothing at all outside the walls except a few square patches, half an acre or so each, green with young corn,” etc.