Even in Christian families, until about thirty years ago, slaves were sold in Gaza. The cattle of Gaza are few, and there is scarcely any export. Camels are common. They number approximately 6,700, including those of the surrounding villages and Beduins. Sheep and goats number approximately 171,000, together with those of the near villages and Beduins. Oxen number approximately 10,000 in and around the city. They are chiefly used for ploughing. Horses and mules and donkeys are not numerous, but the former have an excellent reputation throughout Palestine. Carriages usually belong to Jaffa, and carry back in eleven hours passengers from Gaza. The first motor-car, owned by a German from Jaffa, reached Gaza during April 1912, accomplishing the journey in three hours, and returning the same day. Jackals and foxes are numerous. Quails arrive from Egypt in July and August. FOOTNOTES: [44] Gaza, like Athens, was purposely built _inland_, for fear of pirates. [45] There are seven allusions to potters and potteries in the Old Testament, three in the New Testament, and four in the Deutero-Canonical Books. An excellent photograph of the potter at his wheel is contained in Forder's _Daily Life in Palestine_, Ch. VII., Marshall Bros., Ltd., 1912. CHAPTER XX GARDENS--OLIVE-GROVES--BIRDS, ETC. In January 1884, Mr. H. Chichester Hart visited Gaza, and contributed a valuable paper to the _Quarterly Statement_ of the Palestine Exploration Fund, October 1885, entitled "A Naturalist's Journey to Sinai, Petra, and Southern Palestine." From Chapter XI, Gaza to Jaffa, I cull a few items of general interest-- "Gardens of fruit-trees, olive-groves, and enclosures, hedged by the prickly pear, reached our camp from the inland side. The trees at Gaza are chiefly date-palms,[46] olives, sycamore-fig, carob or locust-tree, and fig; a very handsome tamarisk reaches a height of thirty or forty feet, and has light green foliage, very refreshing and home-like after the dull grey or lifeless green of the desert. The olives are of enormous age. They usually have unbranched trunks, two or three feet in height, then perhaps divided, and at seven or eight feet the leafy canopy, browsed below to a level height by cattle, begins. The average height of the tree is twenty to twenty-five or thirty feet. Old trees have often mere shells of their trunks remaining. I measured the two largest I saw, a few miles north of Gaza; their girth was eighteen and twenty feet respectively at two feet from the ground, a size which was maintained, or very nearly so, till the trunk forked." Gaza is quite embowered in these great olive-groves, which stretch north-eastwards the whole four miles to Beit Hanûn.