To each tent there is at least one dog. The sheep ten per tent, expert in imitating old men’s cough. There are asses and horses secured with chains, and cattle (the _mugitus bovum_) mingle with the brayings of the one and the clanking of the other. The steeds are peculiarly quarrelsome, and their differences provoke the otherwise tranquil camels, who, when aroused, give it to one another in their own Xantippe fashion. Through all these pierced the infantine cry of the kid and goat. Lastly, there is chanticleer, reared from Jebusite eggs,--not like our sober cock, contented with a morning crow or two--but repeating hour by hour, and all night long, the warning notes which startled Peter. Take then the sum--eighty cocks, forty camels, forty asses, forty horses, eight hundred sheep, four hundred goats, one hundred dogs--or fifteen hundred animals, called “dumb,” pent up in a circle of three hundred yards’ diameter, in the middle of which your tent is pitched! Speak, then, of “Nature’s soft nurse.” A watch was appointed. They came, bringing their dogs to sleep round the tent, and, of course, to sup with our guards and attendants. It was near eleven o’clock before they “sat down.” Arabs speak loud and long, and all together. They were long at their supper--longer at their talk. When they had done, the dogs fought for the bones, and continued after they were picked. As soon as they had concluded, the children in the school commenced, all at once, every one a different lesson, as loud as their throats could shriek, and as fast as their tongues could clatter. One sense was not, however, to be racked alone:--the process of acupuncture soon commenced with such vigour and method that, when daylight appeared, not one square line of my whole body remained unsuffused with a roseate hue. Hitherto, I had secured myself against this Egyptian plague, by a musquito curtain sewed to a sheet,[252] but had neglected to have one when needed most. When I stirred up the party, as I did betimes, the consolation I received was, “You are lucky that it is winter, or you must have had musquitoes into the bargain!” Each night it was the same. I recognized my old acquaintance among sheep, kids, dogs, camels--the same school-boys followed us everywhere, and we had over and over again the Lancasterian method in the morning. Not till the fourth night--after all expedients--cotton-stuffing, bandages, &c., had failed--did exhausted Nature close her ears and mine.