Having viewed all the architectural chambers in those few crags of the plain; my companions led me to see the Diwàn, which only of all the Héjr monuments is in the mount Ethlib, in a passage beyond a white sand-drift in face of the kella. Only this Liwàn or Diwàn, ‘hall or council chamber,’ of all the hewn monuments at el-Héjr, (besides some few and obscure caverns,) is plainly not sepulchral. The Diwán alone is lofty and large, well hewn within, with cornice and pilasters, and dressed to the square and plummet, yet a little obliquely. The Diwán alone is an open chamber: the front is of excellent simplicity, a pair of pilasters to the width of the hewn chamber, open as the nomad tent. The architrave is fallen with the forepart of the flat ceiling. The hall, which is ten paces large and deep eleven, and high as half the depth; looks northward. In the passage, which is fifty paces long, the sun never shines, a wind breathes there continually, even in summer: this was a cool site to be chosen in a sultry country. Deep sand lies drifted in the Diwan floor: the Aarab digging under the walls for “gun-salt,” (the cavern is a noon shelter of the nomad flocks,) find no bones, neither is there any appearance of burials.

We journeyed taking turns to walk and ride, and as Zeyd would changing our mantles, till the late afternoon; he doubted then if we might come to the Aarab in this daylight. They often removing, Zeyd could not tell their camping-ground within a dozen or score miles. One of the last night's Ageylies went along with us; armed with a hammer, he drove my sick camel forward. As we looked for our Aarab we were suddenly in sight of the slow wavering bulks of camels feeding dispersedly under the horizon; the sun nigh setting, they were driven in towards the Beduin camp, menzil, another hour distant. Come to the herdsmen, we alighted and sat down, and one of the lads receiving our bowl, ran under his nagas to milk for us. This is kheyr Ullah (“the Lord's bounty”), not to be withheld from any wayfaring man, even though the poor owners should go supperless themselves. A little after, my companions enquired, if I felt the worse; “because, said they, strangers commonly feel a pain after their first drinking camel-milk.” This somewhat harsh thin milk runs presently to hard curds in the stomach.

In approaching the Beduin tents I held back, with the Ageyly, observing the desert courtesy, whilst our host Zeyd preceded us. We found his to be a small summer or “flitting-tent” which they call héjra, “built” (thus they speak) upon the desert sand.

In the field, where we dwelt, I received my patients. Here I found the strangest adventure. A young unwedded woman in Teyma, hearing that the stranger was a Dowlâny, or government man, came to treat of marriage: she gave tittun to Méhsan's wife and promised her more only to bring this match about; my hostess commended her to me as ‘a fair young woman and well grown; her eyes, billah, egg-great, and she smelled of nothing but ambergris.’ The kind damsel was the daughter of a Damascene (perhaps a kella keeper) formerly in this country, and she disdained therefore that any should be her mate of these heartless villagers or nomad people. We have seen all the inhabitants of the Arabian countries contemned in the speech of the border-country dwellers as “Beduw“, —and they say well, for be not all the Nejd Arabians (besides the smiths) of the pure nomad lineage? The Shâmy's daughter resorted to Méhsan's tent, where, sitting in the woman's apartment and a little aloof she might view the white-skinned man from her father's countries;—I saw then her pale face and not very fair eyes, and could conjecture by her careful voice and countenance—Arabs have never any happy opinion of present things,—that she was loath to live in this place, and would fain escape with an husband, one likely to be of good faith and kind; which things she heard to be in the Nasâra.

This was a formidable year for the Fukara: they were in dread of Ibn Rashîd; they feared also that Kheybar would be barred to them, —“Kheybar the patrimony of Annezy,” from whence those tribes in the South eat (the date fruit), eight in the twelve months. Besides it was a year of locusts. The tribesmen disputed in the mejlis, “should they go up anew to the Hauran,” the land of bread; and that which they call, (nearly as nomad Israel coming from the lower deserts,) “The good Land of the North, where is milk enough;” this is Shàm or High Syria. They would remain as before in the Niggera (Batanea,) which is in the marches of their kinsmen the northern half-tribe of W. Aly: they count it fifteen removes, journeying with all their cattle and families, beyond Teyma. They had few years before forsaken their land upon this occasion: the Fejîr in a debate with their sister tribe, the southern W. Aly, had set upon them at Dàr el-Hamra, and taken their camels. Many were slain, and the mishandled kinsmen, appealing to Ibn Rashîd, the Prince gave judgment that satisfaction be made.

We set but a name upon the ship, that our hands have built (with incessant labour) in a decennium, in what day she is launched forth to the great waters; and few words are needful in this place. The book is not milk for babes: it might be likened to a mirror, wherein is set forth faithfully some parcel of the soil of Arabia smelling of sámn and camels. And such, I trust, for the persons, that if the words [written all-day from their mouths] were rehearsed to them in Arabic, there might every one, whose life is remembered therein, hear, as it were, his proper voice; and many a rude bystander, smiting his thigh, should bear witness and cry ‘Ay Wellah, the sooth indeed!’

Little was known to me, writing apart from books and in foreign countries, of those few old Arabic authors that have treated, more Asiatico, of tribes and towns and itineraries in the vast Peninsula. I was too weary to inquire of aught beside my path, and learned men encouraged me to leave them to scholars. The like must be said of the writings of the two or three Europeans [Wallin, Palgrave, Guarmani] that before my time visited Hâyil and Teyma; and which, when I sojourned in Arabia, were known to me only in A. Zehme's excellent treatise.

Footsteps of another ghrazzu of seven had been seen in the plain. In these days M. Aly would have me no more adventure out of sight from the kella: he forbad the gate Arabs to accompany me, ferociously threatening, Wellah, that the lives of them should be for mine: which he said in few days would be required of himself by Mohammed Saîd Pasha.

There remained a single frontispice crag, one of the last outlying monuments, which (since one might climb to the inscription without the ladder-beam) had been left hitherto. I had with difficulty M. Aly's licence to make a last excursion thither with a sure and sheykhly poor man of the Fejîr, Mohammed ed-Deybis, a near kinsman of Zeyd's. My companion's eyes watched all round earnestly as we went, for said he “I must answer for thee, and I am in dread of these ghrazzus!” When the paper prints were long a-drying, for this sepulchre looks to the north, I had leisure to visit the charnel within;— and the monument alone were a sufficient example of all that may be seen at Medáin Sâlih!

Without is a single inscription tablet, which was engraved already when all the lower hewn architecture was yet to begin. The funeral chamber is fully perfected within as a long used burying place: here are loculi, sepulchral cells and sunken sepulchres, and an inner sepulchral chamber; but the fronti spice was only half ended in their time and has remained abandoned.

The early history of the Company's trade and settlements in the Bay of Bengal cannot, so far as I have been able to discover, be traced with satisfactory precision. It belongs to the decades between 1630 and 1650, during which the surviving correspondence from India is more imperfect even than in the latter half of the century, whilst the regular series of the Company's Letter-books, containing the communications of the Court to their agents in India, and to their ship-captains, as preserved in the India Office, does not commence till April 1653, and among these the first letter that I have found addressed direct to Bengal is dated no earlier than:27th February 1657(–8). The first from Bengal direct to the Company appears to be that from Francis Day, dated “Ballasara, Novr. 3d. 1642”, which is quoted on p. clxxxi; and the next that I have found is one dated 12th December 1650, from Wm. Netlam, at the same place, defending himself against certain charges.

This is not only one of the personages most prominent, and most inauspicious for the diarist, in Hedges' Journal, but he is also one of the most memorable figures in the early history of British India. Yet he figures as yet in no Biographical Dictionary, nor have I been able to ascertain anything regarding his origin.

He had arrived in India in 1655 or 1656, and though not, it would appear, sent from England in the Company's service, he before long found admittance into it, and we read his name in a nominal roll entered in the Court Books under date 12-13th January 1657 (i.e., N.S. 1658) as junior member of the Council at Kásimbázár, thus: “Job Charnock, Fourth, (Salary) 20£.”

His original engagement was for five years (which was perhaps the general custom); and a memorial of his, from Patna apparently, dated 23rd February 1663-4, preserved among the I.O. Records, shows that he had intended then to terminate his service and return to England, but at the same time he expresses his willingness to remain, if appointed Chief of the Pattana (Patna) Factory. This appointment, no doubt, was made; for in 1664 he appears incidentally in the records as holding that position, in which he continued till 1680 or 1681.

Some incidental allusions to this famous stone have occurred in the correspondence or consultations already quoted, but I have kept back most of the letters connected with its history, in order to present the narrative, so far as I can trace it, in something of a continuous form.

In the British Museum are preserved three thin folios of transcripts of invoices of merchandise shipped from Madras by Thomas Pitt, during his government there (Addl. MSS. Nos. 22, 854–56). They extend from the latter part of 1698 to January 1708–9, after which probably (as may be gathered from his own words, supra p. cxiv) he gave up trade. But even for that period there is a large gap in the record, extending over several years. These invoices embrace goods to very considerable amounts, shipped chiefly to Europe, but also occasionally to Bengal, Pegu, China, etc., both on his own account and on commission from friends at home. These shipments consist of diamonds (and a few other stones), piece-goods, China-goods, opium, brass and tutenague, cotton, chank-shells, beaver hats (to Pegu and Achin), and minor sundries, in amounts ranging roughly in the order here set down. Diamonds seem to have constituted one of the most usual means of remittance to Europe, and by far the largest part of Pitt's shipments on account of other parties consists of diamonds.