The Oriental shepherd is, at the present day, very simply attired, as were those of patriarchal times. He puts on his garment, consisting of a single piece, by making his left elbow fast in one of its folds, and then throwing it several times round his body. Light and easy in itself, it is also a firm and secure defense, well adapted to a wandering life; preserving the shepherd from the falling rain, the dewy grass, the coldness of the season, or the hard ground on which he finds his bed. In other instances he wears a cloak, which is altogether shapeless, resembling a square sack with an opening in front, and slit at the sides to let out the arms, and which is his sleeping-dress at night. The dress of the women was, most probably, of a lighter fabric than that of the men in primitive times; but on it much obscurity rests. All accorded, however, with extreme simplicity. Wooden bowls and dishes, sacks made of hair-cloth, and bottles formed of a goat, kid, or calf’s skin, stripped off, without an opening; the apertures made by cutting off the tail and legs being sewed up, and when filled tied about the neck, are still the principal furniture of an Eastern shepherd’s tent. A rod or staff, an ox-goad, a sling, a bow, a javelin, are, at the same time, all his implements and weapons. To provide water for the flock is a duty of the first importance. There is an abundant supply from the living fountain and the flowing stream; but these are not always to be found. Happy is the shepherd, then, who sees in the expanse before him the clear waters of a pool or lake, at which his flocks and herds may eagerly slake their thirst. But these may fail to be enjoyed; what appeared to be water may prove to be only the mirage—emblem of forbidden pleasures, exciting hope to entail only bitter disappointment. There remains, then, but one alternative—to dig a well; a process indispensable in the earliest days of human history. The well was often covered with a great stone, which being removed, the person descended some steps to the surface of the water, and on his return poured into a trough that which he had brought up. But as this could only be applicable when the well was not deep, other contrivances still employed in the East, and some of which appear on the Egyptian monuments, must have been of high antiquity. “Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep,” were words which give additional probability to this supposition. The shadoof, consisting of a tapering lever, unequally balanced upon an upright body, and from the small end of which the bucket is suspended by a rope, has long been the most simple and common of all the machines employed to raise water in the East.