The Water From The Rivulet Did Not Appear Sufficient To Irrigate All The Cultivated Grounds, And The Supply Was Even Less Than It Might Have Been, As Half Of The Water Was Suffered, Through Negligence, To Escape From The Narrow Channels.

The village Es-Souk contains about fifty houses, all built of mud, and very low:

Its main street is lined with shops, kept by the people of Kholeys, and frequented by all the neighbouring Bedouins. The principal article for sale was dates, with which most of the shops were filled; in the others were sold dhourra, barley, lentils and onions, (both from Egypt,) rice, and some other articles of provision; but no wheat, that grain being little used by the Bedouins of this country: there were also spices, a few drugs, the bark of a tree for tanning the water-skins, and some butter. Milk was not to be found, for no one likes to be called a milk-seller. A tolerably well-built mosque stands by the rivulet, near some gigantic sycamore trees. I found in it two negro hadjys from Darfour; they had, the night before, been stripped on the road of a few piastres, earned at Mekka: one of them having attempted to defend himself, had been severely beaten; and they now intended to go back to Djidda, and endeavour to retrieve their loss by a few months' labour. One of the Bedouins who had stripped them, was smoking his pipe in the village; but they had not the means of proving the robbery against him, nor of obtaining justice.

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Words from 114062 to 114325 of 182297