Said Abdallah, my Bedouin groom boy, constantly asserted all through the voyage from Alexandretta that Allah was with us and would bring us in safety to the end. His faith had helped us out of the dumps in Naples and his devotion to us and to the horse should not go unremembered. When Akmet Heffez presented to me Wadduda, the war mare, Said came with the gift and ever after counted himself as one of my family. To guard him against fits of homesickness or melancholy, before he had learned to speak any English, I often took him with me, especially when I took my own children to shows and circuses. He had never seen a street fakir in his own country, so that the strain was naturally very heavy on a brain so undeveloped and at first it seemed a little dangerous to show him the wonders of the New York Hippodrome, but I did. No eyes ever saw as his did that afternoon. He had never seen elephants, nor any pictures of them. He had not even heard of the beast. His first query was to ask if they were real, or just made of cloth. He saw Mermaids come from the water and return again. If the roof had dropped in and sprung back to its pace, Said would have thought it was on the regular programs.

          After each show his brain was worn out for a day, and occasionally severe headaches followed, but his comments were often delightfully true.

          One day, accompanied by an interpreter, he went to the Horse Show, and saw there for the first time, a good team of high-acting horses, a pair that almost bumped their chins with their knees. At first his eyes nearly bulged from their sockets. He held up his hands in horror as he exclaimed "Mashalla! Mashalla! Is there truly a race of horses that go up and down in the same place?"

          Within a year Said had mastered enough of English to get along in ordinary conversation, especially if it pertained to horses. There was only one thing he could not understand and does not to this day. He cannot comprehend how the newspapers know that it is or is not going to rain tomorrow. He admits that God knows, but he is doubtful if any newspaper does.

          He is as fine an example of faithfulness as could be found. After he had been in this country nearly a year, and had beaten off many attacks of blues, Dr. Frank Hoskins of the American Mission at Beyrout, Syria, came to the farm to see the horses, and talked with the boy who had been with Anezeh. Reaching home in the evening, I was informed that ever since Dr. Hoskins had taken his departure Said had been crying. Evidently a fit of homesickness had seized him. I went to the barn to see him and he came smilingly from one of the dark corners. But I could see that his eyes were much swollen and still wet with tears. I asked him if he had enjoyed his talk with the visitor and he said he had, for he had spoken Arabic as if he were at home. He tried to appear happy and with forced enthusiasm told how Dr. Hoskins had admired and liked Wadduda, the war mare, and "The Pride of the Desert," best of all the horses. But he was plainly homesick for the sights and smells of the desert and there seemed to be no way to console him. His broken English only made his protestations that he was happy the more pitiful.

          "Said," I said at last, "you have been crying."

          "What cry, Mr. Davenport?"

          "Your eyes," I answered, "are almost swollen shut with weeping."

          His head dropped and his chest began to rise and fall. After a moment or two he said:

          "Mr. Davenport, before Allah, my heart no mad."

          Then he broke out and explained that at night when he shut his eyes his thought took him to the Anezeh, and he joined the tribes as they swing to the south. Now they are past Deyr and approaching Nejd they get into war with the Shammar! Then he wakes up and finds that he is not in the desert, but in Morris Pains. He turns on the other side and sleeps; and by and by his brain goes to Aleppo and when he meets his once great master, Akmet Haffez, he grasps him by the hand. Again he wakes up, and he is still in Morris Plains.

          "But, Mr. Davenport," he added bravely, "Allah knows my heart no mad."

          "Well," I said, "Said, I am going to send you back to the desert."

          "Said go desert?"

          "Yes," I replied, "you are going back to the desert."

          He broke down with hysterical laughter, and grasping me by the hands commenced to kiss them, and tell me that I was too good to stay in this country, that I ought to live with my brother in the desert.

          "Mr. Davenport, Said go desert two or three months?"

          "No, Said, in two or three weeks. I will find a ship, if I can, that will take you direct to Iscanderoon, Aexandretta. There you can follow the old Roman road across the mountains to Aleppo, and from there the camel caravan route to the desert."

          I turned and walked away, bidding him goodnight, and had nearly reached the house, when he called to me and asked if I would say before God that my heart was not mad. I will admit that after dinner I went to bed early, and did not get much sleep.

          I got up before daylight, still restless, and went out, and there in the north pasture saw an impressive spectacle -- the trying out of Said's religious faith. Wadduda, the war mare, dressed and draped in all her beautiful, wild regalia, was in the pasture. From her neck hung the beads of a wild tribe, and from the desert saddle long flowing tassles swayed in the morning breeze. It must have taken Said half an hour to have draped her. Sticking in the dirt at her side, towering over her head ten feet or more, was the war spear from the Anazeh. Kneeing on his prayer rug in front of her forefeet was Said, facing, as I first thought, the strip of timber across the road. But as I watched the picture I saw that he was praying toward the light spot on the horizon -- toward Mecca. I watched for fully five minutes. The boy touched his lips and forehead with an upward stroke of the hand, and dropping both hands beside him, looked intently for a moment at the approaching dawn.

          Rising up slowly, he picked up his little prayer rug, lifted his spear from the damp earth, while the beautiful prancing mare came to his side. Her tail was swinging proudly from side to side.

          As they approached me I saw that Said's eyes were, if anything, more swollen than they had been the evening before. To cheer him up, I spoke to him first.

          "Said, I thought when I saw you in the pasture that you were some member of the Anezeh that had come to see me."

          "La (no), Mr. Davenport, Said no see Anezeh."

          "You are going back to the desert."

          "No go desert. All night Said no sleep -- sit down, no lay down. Go Wadduda sta, pray; come back, no answer -- no sleep -- pray, no sleep."

          Turning, he pointed out into the pasture to the little knoll, and said that there a few months ago Allah had answered his prayer. When he found where Mecca was, he had prayed to Allah and Allah had told him that he was not to go back to the desert; that he had been given with Wadduda by Akmet Haffez to me; and that he was going to stay as long as Wadduda lived -- would stay even when she was gone, with her colt and her colt's colt, and was never going back to the desert. He has never been homesick since.

          When the (desert Bedouin) walks he swings his long robes with an indolent grace that impresses you with the idea that he is not hurried for time. He has no occupations other than war, therefore his plans are not made far ahead. He keeps one mare, at least, always saddled so that he may spring on her back at the slightest alarm. Near where she is picketed his long spear is stuck in the ground ready to be seized for immediate action...He sips coffee a day long, and smokes almost incessantly. He is fond of talking of horses and firearms, and prided himself on being a gentleman. But he will not work. As a matter of fact, with the idea of fighting constantly on his mind, he really believes that he does not have time to work. As long as he has enough for himself and his horses he is perfectly willing to lead the hand-to-mouth existence which his ancestors have led for hundreds of years before him. To-day he does not know where he will be to-morrow. Although he has, in a way, a fixed route of travel he can never be sure that it will be carried out entirely according to the rule. He does not sow any crops, for he does not know who will reap them -- almost certainly not himself. Why then should he work?

          His eyes often gleam with a wild expression; every motion and gesture he makes is artistic and he is well imbued with the innate sense of politeness which does not need to be taught. Though you might be the first white person he ever saw, his manners are always those of a gentleman. He visits a day long, and until quite late in the evening; he is liable to get up at any time in the night and have coffee, and smoke, and talk, and he is generally in a good humor. But he will not work. He has a general air of weariness.

          But underneath his indolence of manner, his slowness of movement and his chariness of speech -- behind all his apparent inertia and lack of initiative -- every now and then you get a glimpse of a crude, elemental force, the existence of which you had not even guessed.

          At first it startles you. You have been received with the grace and charm of true hospitality. You have been made entirely at home in your strange surroundings. You have given up wondering how such polished gentlemen (and I use the term in its best sense) could be found in such a desolate, God-forsaken country. Then - just a look, perhaps at some inadvertent remark you may have made; maybe a gesture, slight in itself, but full of significance, changes the entire aspect. The whole thing is undefinable, but as you look through the flaps of the goat-hair tent under which you are sitting and out of the desert you realize that the warrior Bedouin is in his right place. In a fertile country, clothed with verdure, he would be out of place; trees and buildings would spoil the picture of which he is the central figure. There is that about him which needs for its existence the great expanse of sterile nature you see around him...

          To offer a tip would be an insult to the poorest Bedouin. In the middle of one night, when we stopped to drink from an old well, a ragged Arab held my horse and gave me some grapes. It was between two and three in the morning, and you can tip most of us at that hour. There was no one close enough to see him when I tried to hand him a piece of silver, but he shoved it back without a word, a thing I didn't think would be done in any country of the world. There is some answer to this, but no one seems to know what it is. I certainly do not. In Aleppo they would take money of any kind and in Beyrout you were afraid they would take your life. And on Broadway did you ever offer anybody any money at any time of the day or night and have it refused?

          ...If a Bedouin tells you the breed of a horse, or mare, you can bet it is true. They believe in just plain simple God, and think that if they do right God will be easy to please. They marry as many as four wives and think they are happy...

          The Bedouin women are much like the squaws of the American Indians. They are seldom seen unless when packing the camels at moving time. Though they have to do the cooking, they are never seen around the tents. The men stroll here and there as if they belonged to some great club, which in a way they do. Their Sheikh's tent is their club and there they go and come at will. There they sip back bitter coffee and talk about horses. They have great reverence for the owner of a celebrated mare, and when such a man enters a tent, those present rise, not in honor of him, but of the mare. Wars are commonly started with another tribe to get possession of a mare whose blood they want.

          In judging his horses he is different from the average man, and I think his theory is one of the best. The Bedouins we met laughed over the few Europeans they had seen coming to buy stallions for the various European governments. These men, they said, instead of looking at the horse's head, looked first at his feet and ankles. They could not understand that. If they were going to trust me with their purses and, what was more, their life, they declared they would look first, for twenty minutes, in my face and eyes and not pay so much attention to my feet. While it was, of course, understood that a horse's legs and feet should be perfect, still a horse showed even what his legs were made of by his head and no horse was ever better or worse than what his head showed. They defied me to pick out one of the distinguished war mares that did not show her distinctive characteristics more plainly in her head than in the rest of her makeup. And I found they were right...

          I found out from observation and experience, that whatever the Bedouin tells one about his horse, and of the horse's character, you generally find to be true. I had no opportunity of judging the truth of the statement, that when they are in war for three days the horse is better on the third day than on the first, but I did see that on the third day a small Abeyeh Sherrahkieh mare, carrying Arthur Moore and his weight, carried him easier than she did on the first day.

          In looking back at that summer trip in the desert I should say that we learned more than anything else to take things as they come. Of course we could not have done otherwise, but at least we learned not to complain -- too much. In our general American life we complain if we are asked to eat off a table-cloth which has once been used. We rather object to drinking from a glass of water if another person has drank a sup from the same glass. We sometimes complain at hotels because the sheets are not changed more than twice a week, but all this bluff disappears quickly when we have borne the hardships of the desert in the summer time. There we found ourselves shoving a camel's head to one side so that we could drink the riled muddy alkali water from a pool; we thought nothing of being the last, after twenty Bedouins had drunk out of a wooden bowl of sour milk. After you have eaten two weeks with your hands, knives and forks seem awkward. You can, in fact, pick out with more accuracy and speed a choice piece of mutton with your fingers than you can with a spoon, and this means something when you are squatting round a meal with thirty Bedouins each with as long a reach as Fitzsimmons.

          We learned to ride a day in the heat and perhaps part of the night and then be glad to lie down in a Bedouin's bed a minute after he had climbed out of it, and we ate with zest from the same mound of rice as the rest of the tribe. After all, the desert is the great leveler and it shows us how trivial and artificial we are in some ways in our civilized life.

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Part V

Part VI

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