caused to kneel down in a circle about their resting-place, with their
faces pointing outwards, and their load and saddle piled up behind them,
and being naturally so wakeful as to be roused from sleep by the least
noise, they served their masters instead of a guard.
As in so wild and steril a country the purchasing of provisions as they
might be wanted on the way was of course out of the question, they were
obliged to furnish themselves in Egypt with a stock sufficient for their
consumption during the whole journey. In most countries nature supplies
man wherewith to quench his thirst, without his experiencing the
necessity of exercising his foresight or taxing his ingenuity, by
lavishly scattering about her refreshing springs over the earth, or by
suspending, as in the forests of Brazil, diminutive vegetable reservoirs
in the thicket, where he may always calculate upon finding the requisite
quantity of cool pure water. But in Arabia this rule does not hold. Our
traveller, therefore, upon commencing his journey, took care to provide
himself with a sufficient number of goat-skins, which were replenished
every four or five days, or oftener, if wells were met with. Wine,
likewise, and brandy, together with wheatflour, rice, biscuit, honey,
oil, vinegar, olives, lentils, potted flesh, and such other articles of
food as would keep sweet and wholesome during two months, were laid in;
as well as barley, with a few beans intermixed, which, with balls made
of the flour of the one or both of them, and a little water, constituted
the whole sustenance of the camels. Their kitchen furniture consisted of
a copper pot and wooden bowl, in the former of which they cooked, and
from the latter ate their food, or kneaded therein their unleavened
cakes. When the caravan halted for the purpose of cooking their
breakfast or dinner, the dung left by the camels of preceding travellers
was carefully gathered up, there being no wood; and this, when it had
been a few days exposed to the sun, took fire quickly, and burned like
charcoal. Their food being prepared, whether it was potted flesh boiled
with rice, a lentil-soup, or unleavened cakes, served up with oil or
honey, one of the Arabs belonging to the party, not, as the Scripture
says, “to eat his morsel alone,” placing himself upon the highest spot
of ground in the neighbourhood, called out thrice, with a loud voice to
all his brethren, “the Sons of the Faithful,” to come and partake of it;
though none of them, says the traveller, were in view or perhaps within
a hundred miles of them. The custom, however, is maintained as a mark of
benevolence, and, when an opportunity occurs, of their hospitality.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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