January 23d. Our Camels Being Tired, Having Found Very Little Food On
The Road, Though They Always Had The Whole Morning To Pasture, And
Several Of Them Threatening To Break Down, The Drivers Stopped Here The
Whole Day.
Like the before-mentioned Bedouin villages, Szafra is a
market-place for all the surrounding tribes:
Its houses are built on the
declivity of the mountain, and in the valley, which is narrow, leaving
scarcely room enough for the date-groves which line both sides of it. A
copious rivulet flows down the valley, the water of which is dispersed
among the date-trees, and irrigates some cultivated fields in the wider
parts of the windings of this valley. Wheat, dhourra, barley, and dokhen
are sown here; of vegetables the Badendjan, or egg-plant, Meloukhye
onions and radishes are cultivated; and vines, lemon, and banana-trees
abound. The soil is every where sandy, but rendered fertile by
irrigation: copious rains had fallen three days since in the mountains,
and a torrent twenty feet broad, and three or four feet deep, was still
flowing. The date-groves extend about four miles; they belong to the
inhabitants of Szafra, as well as of neighbouring Bedouins, who keep
some of their own people, or Arab labourers, employed in irrigating the
grounds, and repair hither themselves when
[p.307] the dates are ripe. The date-trees pass from one person to
another in the course of trade, and are sold by the single tree; the
price paid to a girl's father on marrying her, consists often in date-
trees.
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