Upon A Hill Over The Ain Mousa The Arabs Lyathene
(Arabic) Were Encamped, Who Cultivate The Valley Of Mousa.
We repaired
to their encampment, but were not so hospitably received as we had been
the night before.
Ain Mousa is a copious spring, rushing from under a rock at the eastern
extremity of Wady Mousa. There are no ruins near the spring; a little
lower down in the valley is a mill, and above it is the village of
Badabde (Arabic), now abandoned. It was inhabited till within a few
years by about twenty families of Greek Christians, who subsequently
retired to Kerek. Proceeding from the spring along the rivulet for about
twenty minutes, the valley opens, and leads into a plain about a quarter
of an hour in length and ten minutes in breadth, in which the rivulet
joins with another descending from the mountain to the southward. Upon
the declivity of the mountain, in the angle formed by the junction of
the two rivulets, stands Eldjy (Arabic), the principal village of Wady
Mousa. This place contains between two and three hundred houses, and is
enclosed by a stone wall with three regular gates. It is most
picturesquely situated, and is inhabited by the
WADY MOUSA
[p.421] Lyathene abovementioned, a part of whom encamp during the whole
year in the neighbouring mountains. The slopes of the mountain near the
town are formed into artificial terraces, covered with corn fields and
plantations of fruit trees. They are irrigated by the waters of the two
rivulets and of many smaller springs which descend into the valley below
Eldjy, where the soil is also well cultivated. A few large hewn stones
dispersed over the present town indicate the former existence of an
ancient city in this spot, the happy situation of which must in all ages
have attracted inhabitants. I saw here some large pieces of beautiful
saline marble, but nobody could tell me from whence they had come, or
whether there were any rocks of this stone in the mountains of Shera.
I hired a guide at Eldjy, to conduct me to Haroun’s tomb, and paid him
with a pair of old horse-shoes. He carried the goat, and gave me a skin
of water to carry, as he knew that there was no water in the Wady below.
In following the rivulet of Eldjy westwards the valley soon narrows
again; and it is here that the antiquities of Wady Mousa begin. Of these
I regret that I am not able to give a very complete account: but I knew
well the character of the people around me; I was without protection in
the midst of a desert where no traveller had ever before been seen; and
a close examination of these works of the infidels, as they are called,
would have excited suspicions that I was a magician in search of
treasures; I should at least have been detained and prevented from
prosecuting my journey to Egypt, and in all probability should have been
stripped of the little money which I possessed, and what was infinitely
more valuable to me, of my journal book.
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