But The Tick Is An Inhabitant Of
The Dust, A Dry Horny Insect Without Any Apparent Moisture In Its
Composition; It Lives In Hot Sand And Dust, Where It Cannot Possibly
Obtain Nourishment, Until Some Wretched Animal Lies Down Upon The Spot,
When It Becomes Covered With These Horrible Vermin.
I have frequently
seen dry desert places so infested with ticks that the ground was
perfectly alive with them, and it would have been impossible to rest on
the earth.
In such spots, the passage in Exodus has frequently occurred to me as
bearing reference to these vermin, which are the greatest enemies to man
and beast. It is well known that, from the size of a grain of sand in
their natural state, they will distend to the size of a hazelnut after
having preyed for some days upon the blood of an animal. The Arabs are
invariably infested with lice, not only in their hair, but upon their
bodies and clothes; even the small charms or spells worn upon the arm in
neatly-sewn leathern packets are full of these vermin. Such spells are
generally verses copied from the Koran by the Faky, or priest, who
receives some small gratuity in exchange. The men wear several such
talismans upon the arm above the elbow, but the women wear a large bunch
of charms, as a sort of chatelaine, suspended beneath their clothes
around the waist.
Although the tope or robe, loosely but gracefully arranged around the
body, appears to be the whole of the costume, the women wear beneath
this garment a thin blue cotton cloth tightly bound round the loins,
which descends to a little above the knee; beneath this, next to the
skin, is the last garment, the rahat.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 42 of 337
Words from 11046 to 11338
of 90207
