Its Breadth

[P.391] varies from one to four and five miles; it is covered with forests, in the midst of which the miserable peasants build their huts of rushes, and cultivate their Dhourra and tobacco fields.

These peasants are called El Ghowárene (Arabic), and amount to about three hundred families; they live very poorly, owing to the continual exactions of the neighbouring Bedouins, who descend in winter from the mountains of Belka and Kerek, and pasture their cattle amidst the fields. The heat of the climate of this low valley, during the summer, renders it almost uninhabitable; the people then go nearly naked; but their low huts, instead of affording shelter from the mid-day heat rather increase it. At this period violent intermittent fevers prevail, to which, however, they are so much accustomed, that they labour in the fields during the intervals of the paroxysms of the disease.

The principal settlement of the Ghowárene is at the southern extremity of the sea, near the embouchure of the Wady el Ahhsa; their village is called Ghor Szafye (Arabic), and is the winter rendezvous of more than ten large tribes of Bedouins. Its situation corresponds with that of Zoar. The spots not cultivated being for the greater part sandy, there is little pasturage, and the camels, in consequence, feed principally upon the leaves of the trees.

About eight hours to the N. of Szafye is the Ghor el Mezra (Arabic), a village much frequented by the people of Kerek, who there buy the tobacco which they smoak. About the middle of the lake on the same eastern shore, are some ruins of an ancient city, called Towahein el Sukkar (Arabic) i.e. the Sugar Mills. Farther north the mountains run down to the lake, and a steep cliff overhangs the sea for about an hour, shutting out all passage along the shore. Still farther to the north are the ruined places called Kafreyn (Arabic), and Rama (Arabic), and in the valley of the Jordan, south of Abou Obeida, are the ruins of Nemrin (Arabic), probably

PRODUCTIONS OF THE GHOR

[p.392] the Bethnimra of the Scriptures. In the vegetable productions of this plain the botanist would perhaps discover several unknown species of trees and plants; the reports of the Arabs on this subject are so vague and incoherent, that it is almost impossible to obtain any precise information from them; they speak, for instance, of the spurious pomegranate tree, producing a fruit exactly like that of the pomegranate, but which, on being opened, is found to contain nothing but a dusty powder; this, they pretend, is the Sodom apple-tree; other persons however deny its existence. The tree Asheyr (Arabic), is very common in the Ghor. It bears a fruit of a reddish yellow colour, about three inches in diameter, which contains a white substance, resembling the finest silk, and enveloping some seeds. The Arabs collect the silk, and twist it into matches for their fire-locks, preferring it to the common match, because it ignites more readily.

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