One October afternoon we went to ‛Ayn Minjid, where there is a well-like structure built down into the ground. The little trickling stream of the spring at that time was about as thick as the tendril of a grape-vine. In winter the water rises high up in the well-like reservoir. A child of the neighborhood was once drowned by falling into it over the unprotected edge in the time of full water. Thence we went to the spring of ‛Ayn Mizrâb, where there is a similar well-like place, built up of hewn stone and cemented on the inside, making a shaft, with the spring at the bottom. This spring was even weaker than ‛Ayn Minjid. There was a tiny depression in one side of the bottom which held a little water. Some girls were trying to scrape up some of it with their skin-buckets. The well was fully twelve feet deep. The leather bucket was let down by a rope. The top of the bucket was held open by a stick stretched across its mouth. There was hardly a basin of water in the bottom of the well, and the most skilful casting of the bucket could gather very little. From one side of the well at the bottom was a canal leading out into some vineyards. To ‛Ayn Mizrâb the women are said sometimes to bring their jars at midnight and set them about the fountain, the first one placing a jar thus claiming the right to draw first when it becomes light enough. If the moon is out they can draw water in the moonlight. When we first reached Râm Allâh the country was suffering an unusual drought. For the preceding thirty days, during which there ought to have fallen some of the heaviest showers of the season, there had been no rain. The natives were praying for it. The country looked parched and brown at the time when it is usually beautifully decked with flowers. Food prices were high and the outlook for the poor was unpromising. Shortly after we arrived a short, sharp shower fell, but no more came until the middle of May, when the unusual again happened and a heavy downpour shut us in a day or two. We had some cool, blustering weather at a time when the hot days are expected and the dry season well begun. In times of such strange climatic anomalies the natives think they see portents of heavenly significance, that possibly the Messiah may be returning. Rain is the great blessing of nature, as fondly looked for as sunny weather is with us.[198] ----- -----