We There, After Paying Our Custom, Joined With Other Merchants, To Form A Caravan, Bought Camels, And Hired Men To

Load and drive them, furnished ourselves with rice, butter, dates, honey made of dates, and onions; besides which, every merchant

Bought a certain number of live sheep, and hired certain shepherds to drive them along with us. We also bought tents to lie in, and to put our goods under; and in this caravan of ours there were four thousand camels laden with spices and other rich goods. These camels can subsist very well for two or three days without water, feeding on thistles, wormwood, magdalene, and other coarse weeds they find by the way. The government of the caravans, the deciding of all quarrels that occur, and the apportionment of all duties to be paid, are committed to the care of some one rich and experienced merchant in the company, whose honour and honesty can best be confided in. We spent forty days in our journey from Bagdat to Aleppo, travelling at the rate of from twenty to twenty-four miles a-day, resting ourselves commonly from two in the afternoon till three next morning, at which time we usually began our journey.

Eight days journey from Bagdat, near to a town called Heit, where we cross the Euphrates in boats, and about three miles from that place, there is a valley in which are many mouths, or holes, continually throwing out, in great abundance, a black kind of substance like tar, which serves all this country for paying their boats and barks.

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