These wells are much the same throughout Arabia; their only diversity is in size and depth, but their hydraulic machinery is everywhere alike. Over the well's month is fixed a crossbeam, supported high in air on pillars of wood or stone on either side, and on this beam are from three to six small wheels, over which pass the ropes of as many large leather buckets, each containing nearly twice the ordinary English measure. These are let down into the depth, and then drawn up again by camels or asses, who pace slowly backwards or forwards on an inclined plane leading from the edge of the well itself to a pit prolonged for some distance. When the buckets rise to the verge, they tilt over and pour out their contents by a broad channel into a reservoir hard by, from which part the watercourses that irrigate the garden. The supply thus obtained is necessarily discontinuous, and much inferior to what a little more skill in mechanism affords in Egypt and Syria; while the awkward shaping and not unfrequently the ragged condition of the buckets themselves causes half the liquid to fall back into the well before it reaches the brim. The creaking, singing noise of the wheels, the rush of water as the buckets attain their turning-point, the unceasing splash of their overflow dripping back into the source, all are a message of life and moisture very welcome in this dry and stilly region, and may be heard far off amid the sandhills, a first intimation to the sun-scorched traveller of his approach to a cooler resting-place. W.G. PALGRAVE. * * * * * COURTESY. What virtue is so fitting for a knight, Or for a lady whom a knight should love, As courtesy; to bear themselves aright To all of each degree as doth behove? For whether they be placèd high above Or low beneath, yet ought they well to know Their good: that none them rightly may reprove Of rudeness for not yielding what they owe: Great skill it is such duties timely to bestow. Thereto great help Dame Nature's self doth lend: For some so goodly gracious are by kind, That every action doth them much commend; And in the eyes of men great liking find, Which others that have greater skill in mind, Though they enforce themselves, cannot attain; For everything to which one is inclined Doth best become and greatest grace doth gain; Yet praise likewise deserve good thewes enforced with pain. SPENSER. [Notes: _Edmund Spenser_ (born 1552, died 1599), the poet who, in Elizabeth's reign, revived the poetry of England, which since Chaucer's day, two centuries before, had been flagging. _Gracious are by kind, i.e.,_ by nature. _Kind_ properly means _nature_.