Haifa; or, Life in modern PalestineOliphant, Laurence
History
Haifa; or, Life in modern Palestine
Oliphant, Laurence
Palestine -- Description and travel
Near them a very singular and unpleasant accident occurred to me. I rode
my horse to drink at what seemed a muddy puddle, which was about ten or
twelve feet in diameter. Instead of being content to drink at the
margin, he took two steps into it, and suddenly disappeared head first;
that is, his head disappeared, his hind-quarters remained for a moment
poised above the water just long enough to enable me to throw myself off
backward into about two feet of puddle. We had walked into an overflowed
well. When his hind-quarters at last went down into it his head came up,
or, at all events, as much of it as was required for breathing and
snorting, which he did prodigiously, evidently in a panic of terror,
while I stood drenched and shivering on the bank in the cold east wind
and sleet, wondering how we were ever to get him out. The poor beast was
out of his depth, but the dimensions of the well were too limited to
enable him to swim, or even to scramble freely. Fortunately I had sent
on my saddlebags by my servant, or the animal would have been hopelessly
weighted down. As it was, it was only by the united efforts of the party
tugging at the bridle and stirrup-leathers that, after many futile
efforts, at the end of each of which he fell back and for a moment
disappeared altogether, we ultimately succeeded in extricating him.
Meantime my own plight was in the last degree unenviable, the more
especially as I was not in very good health at the time, a consideration
which induced my companion, with a truly commendable devotion, to take
off his nether garments and insist on my wearing them instead of my own,
while he performed the remainder of the day's journey in the slight
protection which he wore beneath them.
It was in this guise, and while still discussing my strange mishap, that
our attention was suddenly arrested by finding ourselves surrounded by
what are perhaps the most interesting of antiquarian objects, a number
of dolmens. In a very limited area—none of them were over two hundred
yards apart—I counted twenty. The subject of these rude stone monuments
of a prehistoric age is so interesting that I will venture on a few
words in regard to them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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