The Entire
Length Of The River Was Four Farsakh, Or Twelve Miles; The Breadth Of It
Four Miles; And Its Depth, Eight Or Nine Feet.
The valley of Shathat was
quite choked up; and the place where it is thus choked, called from this
circumstance El Sedd, is still to be seen.
The flame was seen at Yembo
and at Mekka. An Arab of Teyma (a small town in the N.E. Desert from six
to eight days' journey from Medina) wrote a letter during night by the
light reflected from it to that distance.
"In the same year, a great inundation of the Tigris happened, by
which half the town of Baghdad was destroyed; and at the close of this
same year the temple of Medina itself was burnt to the ground.
"The Arabs were prepared to witness such a conflagration; for they
remembered the saying of Mohammed, that 'the day of judgment will not
happen until a fire shall appear in the Hedjaz, which shall cause the
necks of the camels at Basra to shine.'"]
From this account the stream of lava must be sought at about one
[p.360] hour distant to the E. of the town. The volcanic productions
which cover the immediate neighbourhood of the town and the plain to the
west of it, are probably owing to former eruptions of the same volcano;
for nothing is said, in the relation, of stones having been cast out of
the crater to any considerable distance, and the whole plain to the
westward, as far as Wady Akyk, three miles distant, is covered with the
above-described volcanic productions.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 509 of 669
Words from 138645 to 138917
of 182297
