Bedouins Sometimes Encamp There; At This Time A Corps Of Turkish
Cavalry Had Pitched Their Tents Near These Wells.
In the town are several wells of brackish water, but no cisterns.
The
supply of water for drinking is obtained from some large cisterns,
[p.423] at about five minutes' walk from the Medina gate, where the
rainwater is collected. Small canals have been dug across the
neighbouring plains, to convey the streams of rain-water to these
cisterns. They are spacious, well-cased, subterranean reservoirs, and
some of them large enough to supply the whole town for several weeks.
They are the property of private families, whose ancestors built them,
and who sell the water, at certain prices, fixed by the governor, who
also exacts a tax from each of them. The water is excellent, much better
than that of any other town of the Hedjaz, where the inhabitants are not
industrious enough to form similar cisterns. When the winter-rains fail,
the inhabitants of Yembo suffer severely, and are obliged to fill their
water-skins at the distant wells of Aseylya.
Yembo was formerly annexed to the government of the Sherif of Mekka, who
ought to have divided the receipts at the custom-house with the Turkish
Pasha of Djidda. Ghaleb appropriated it entirely to his own treasury,
and kept here a vizier, or governor, with a guard of about fifty or
sixty men. He appears to have had little other authority than that of
collecting the customs, while the Arabs of the town were left to the
government of their own Sheikhs, and enjoyed much greater liberty than
the people of Mekka and Djidda.
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