The whole hillside was covered with graves, and some curious combinations presented themselves. There the tomb of some landowner was marked by a plough, the inconceivably primitive instrument with which the fellah scratches the surface of the fertile soil; there a fragment of the blue cotton, which is the inevitable dress of the Bedu, twisted round a stick, shows where some woman has been laid to rest; farther again, a stone, roughly sculptured with the instruments of coffee-making, celebrates the hospitality of some unnamed shech; and, in strange contrast with the savagery of to-day, we step over a sculptured capital or carven pillar, memorial of the art and culture of nigh two thousand years ago; while, reminder that "extremes meet," our thoughts are carried back yet another thousand years at sight of the welys—tombs of Moslem saints—standing apart on mounds, shadowed with ancient oaks, where the pious come to worship to-day, to the Israelites who did so of old time, "upon every high hill and under every green tree."
Around the spring were groups of women, with the tattooed faces, hanging veils, and curious long, narrow dresses of the East Jordan Bedu, barely wide enough to stride in, but lying at least a yard upon the ground, front and back, so that when they walk the skirt has to be kilted, often to the entire violation of such ideas of modesty as may have originally dictated its design. They had taken much interest in the Lady, and, as usual, had speculated as to which of her companions might be her proprietor—always the first point to ascertain—the remaining matters of curiosity in regard to a woman being: What did she cost? and How many boys has she?—after which they frankly discuss her "points," and express surprise at the smallness of her waist.
Suddenly there was an instant's silence; all eyes were turned southward, where a procession had just come into sight winding up the valley. A weird, melancholy song broke out, the women pressed forward, and we realised that a funeral was advancing. We had already observed a newly-made grave; but the procession passed it by, and halted beside the nearest wely, under a group of trees. The four men who carried the bier laid it gently down, and the women, with loud cries, gathered about it on the ground. The body was that of a woman, so closely wrapped in her dress and veil that we could only perceive that she was slender. All joined in the loud wailing, led, apparently, by a professional mourner, who sat beside the corpse, beating her breast, and throwing dust upon her head. It was a pathetic evidence of the homogeneousness of humankind, despite differences of custom, that those who really wept, silently and apart, were, we understood, the mother and mother-in-law of the dead, while a young man who leant alone against a tree trunk was the newly-married husband of a three days' bride. She had died, they said, of a sudden illness, the description of which suggested measles or small-pox. We could not but think of the little home made desolate, of plans and hopes never to be realised, of the bereaved husband—for here, among the Bedu, marriage is a matter of choice and not of compulsion, as among the Arabs of the towns—of the poor girl herself, who, having reached what is the main object of existence among the Orientals, had been called away just as life was opening. Our point of view may have been a little too Occidental, or it may have been another case of "extremes meet," the mean being represented by the higher civilisation of Khalil, a true Jerusalemite, for his one remark was: "It was a pity the bridegroom had had no use out of his bargain when he had paid so much for her!"