All Such Fountains
Are Much Prized By The People, Who Call Them "Rock-Water," And
Attribute To Them Tonic And
Digestive virtues.
[FN#23] As far as I could discover, the reason of the ruinous state of
the country at
Present is the effect of the old Wahhabi and Egyptian
wars in the early part of the present century, and the misrule of the
Turks. In Arabia the depopulation of a village or a district is not to
be remedied, as in other countries, by an influx of strangers; the land
still belongs to the survivors of the tribe, and trespass would be
visited with a bloody revenge.
[FN#24] Without these forts the Turks, at least so said my companions,
could never hold the country against the Badawin. There is a little
amour propre in the assertion, but upon the whole it is true. There are
no Mohammed Alis, Jazzars, and Ibrahim Pachas in these days.
[FN#25] To "halal" is to kill an animal according to Moslem rites: a
word is wanted to express the act, and we cannot do better than to
borrow it from the people to whom the practice belongs.
[FN#26] He is now dead, and has been succeeded by a son worse than
himself.
[FN#27] The greatest of all its errors was that of appointing to the
provinces, instead of the single Pasha of the olden time, three
different governors, civil, military, and fiscal, all depending upon
the supreme council at Constantinople.
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