Although The Thermometer Showed Summer Heat, The Air Was Cloudy And Raw
Blasts Poured Down From The Mountains.
At half past 3 P.M. our camels were
lazily loaded, and we followed the course of the Fiumara,
Which runs to
the W. and S. W. After half an hour's progress, we arrived at the gully in
which are the wells, and the guides halted because they descried half-a-
dozen youths and boys bathing and washing their Tobes. All, cattle as well
as men, were sadly thirsty: many of us had been chewing pebbles during the
morning, yet, afraid of demands for tobacco, the Bedouins would have
pursued the march without water had I not forced them to halt. We found
three holes in the sand; one was dry, a second foul, and the third
contained a scanty supply of the pure element from twenty to twenty-five
feet below the surface. A youth stood in the water and filled a wicker-
pail, which he tossed to a companion perched against the side half way up:
the latter in his turn hove it to a third, who catching it at the brink,
threw the contents, by this time half wasted, into the skin cattle trough.
We halted about half an hour to refresh man and beast, and then resumed
our way up the Wady, quitting it where a short cut avoids the frequent
windings of the bed. This operation saved but little time; the ground was
stony, the rough ascents fatigued the camels, and our legs and feet were
lacerated by the spear-like thorns.
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