We Rested Here The Greater Part Of The Day, Under A Large
Kharnoub Tree.
Our Sheikh had no pressing business, but like all Arabs,
fond of idleness, and of living well at other
People’s expense, he by no
means hastened his journey, but easily found a pretext for stopping;
wherever we alighted a couple of sheep or goats were immediately killed,
and the best fruits, together with plenty of tobacco, were presented to
us. Our company increased at every village, as all those Arabs who had
horses followed us, in order to partake of our good fare, so that our
party amounted at last to eighty men. At two hours and a quarter is a
fine spring; two hours and a half, the village Khanzyre (Arabic), which
is larger than Oerak and Ketherabba. Here we stopped a whole day, our
Sheikh having a house in the village, and a wife, whom he dared not
carry to Kerek, having another family there. In the evening he held a
court
[p.397] of justice, as he had done at Ketherabba, and decided a number
of disputes between the peasants; the greater part of these were
concerning money transactions between husbands and the families of their
wives; or related to the mixed property of the Arabs in mares, in
consequence of the Bedouin custom of selling only one-half, or one-third
of those animals.
August 6th.———Khanzyre is built on the declivity of one of the highest
mountains on the eastern side of the Dead sea; in its neighbourhood are
a number of springs whose united waters form a rivulet which irrigates
the fields belonging to the village, and an extensive tract of gardens.
The villages of this country are each governed by its own Sheikh, and
the peasants are little better than Bedouins; their manners, dress, and
mode of living are exactly the same.
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