This Being A Time Of War, The Soldiers
Continued To Wear Their Arms Over The Cloak.
In the afternoon, the coffee-house keeper dressed the provisions I had
brought, as well as those belonging to many others of the company.
There
was great disorder in the place, and nobody could attempt to sleep. Soon
after our arrival, a troop of soldiers passed, and pitched their tents a
little farther on the plain; they then entered the coffee-huts, and took
away all the sweet water, which had been procured from a well about
half-an-hour distant, and kept at Hadda in large jars. The huts of the
few miserable
[p.56] inhabitants, thus exposed to all the casualties attending the
continual passage of troops, are formed with brushwood, in the shape of
a flattened cone, and they receive light only through the entrance; here
the whole family lives huddled together in one apartment. The numerous
coffee-huts are spacious sheds, supported by poles, with the coffee-
waiter's hearth placed in one corner. They are infested by great numbers
of rats, bolder than any I ever saw.
We left Hadda about five o'clock in the evening. The road continuing
over the plain, the soil is sandy, in some parts mixed with clay, and
might, I think, be easily cultivated by digging wells. At one hour from
Hadda, we saw on our left, in the plain, some date-trees: here, as I
understood, flows a small rivulet, which in former times irrigated some
fields.
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