Note 8 — WIDE AND INHOSPITABLE DESERTS.

“Burckhardt gives the following account of the same custom, in his travels in Nubia. ‘In two hours and a half we came to a plain on the top of the mountain called Akabet el Benat, the Rocks of the Girls. Here the Arabs who serve as guides through these mountains, have devised a singular mode of extorting presents from the traveler: they alight at certain spots in the Akabet El Benat, and beg a present; if it is refused, they collect a heap of sand, and mold it into the form of a diminutive tomb, and then placing a stone at each of the extremities, they apprise the traveler that his tomb is made; meaning, that henceforward, there will be no security for him, in this rocky wilderness. Most persons pay a trifling contribution, rather than have their graves made before their eyes; there were, however, several tombs of this description dispersed over the plain.’”