The Land of Midian (Revisited) — Volume 1Burton, Richard Francis, Sir
Science
The Land of Midian (Revisited) — Volume 1
Burton, Richard Francis, Sir
Burton, Richard Francis, Sir, 1821-1890; Hejaz (Saudi Arabia) -- Description and travel
The high-level spring and the middle water rise in sandy basins;
course down deeply furrowed beds of grit; and, after passing
through a tangle of vegetation, a dense forest of palms, alive
and dead, and open patches sown with grain, wilfully waste their
treasures in the upper slope of the right bank. This abundance of
water has developed a certain amount of industry; although the
Bedawin tear to pieces the young male-dates, whose tender green
growth, at the base of the fronds, supplies them with a "chaw." A
number of artificial runners has been trained to water dwarf
barley-plots, whose fences of date-fronds defend them from sheep
and goats; and further down the bank are the fruit trees which
first attracted our attention.
The low-level water consists of two springs. The upper is the
'Ayn el-'Aryánah, springing from the sands under the date-trees
which line the right and left sides: apparently it is the
drainage of a gypsum "hat," called El-Kulayb, "the Little
Dog"--in their Doric the Bedawin pronounce the word Galáib.
Further down the bed, and divided by a tract of dry sand, is the
'Ayn el-Fara'i, which also rises from both banks, forms a single
stream, sleeps in deep pellucid pools like fairy baths among the
huge boulders of grey granite, and finally sinks before reaching
the shore. When these waters shall again be regulated, as of old,
they will prove amply sufficient for the vegetable and the
mineral. Anton, the Greek, who everywhere saw the shop, was so
charmed with the spot, that he at once laid out his
establishment: here shall be the hotel; there the billiard and
gambling room, and there the garden, the kiosk, the buvette--in
fact, he projected a miner's paradise.
On the crest of this right bank, above the vegetation, lies the
traditional Musallat Musá ("Moses' Oratory"), of which the
foundations, or rather the base-stones, are in situ. The larger
enceinte measures, without including two walls projecting from
the north-east and north-west angles, an oblong of thirty-seven
by twenty-five feet; and, as usual with Midianite ruins, it has
been built of all manner of material. The inner sanctum opens to
the west, the northern and southern basement-lines only
remaining: the former is composed of eight blocks of gypsum
resembling alabaster, five being larger than the others; and the
southern of three. Upon these the Bedawin still deposit their
simple ex-votos, oyster and other shells, potsherds, and coloured
pebbles.[EN#102]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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