Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates Vol 2 - The Search For Mecca

1 68 Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates, [en. xxm.
this to drink. There are however wells in certain
places, and in others pools of rain water more or
less abundant according to the season.
Their position
is well kno^^^.l to the tribes. By the middle
of April the sun begins to show its power, the pools
are exhausted, the grass has grown yellow and shed
its seed, and all this wealth of pasture disap2)ears.
Then the trilies cross the hills, rejoin their flocks
and enter into treaties with the towns. Shearing
jjegins in May, and the three year old colts and
camels find purchasers, and the year goes round
again.
Such is the physical aspect of the desert. There
remains to be described that of the two great rivers
which traverse it, and which introduce two new
features strange to Arabia, running water and trees.'"
The valleys are so nearly similar that a description
of one, the Euphrates, will suffice for both. The
Euphrates when it appears at the edge of the desert
is
already a full grown river, as large as the Danube
at Belgrade, and flowing at the rate of four and
a half miles an hour. Its waters are turbid, but
sweet and pure as the water of the Nile. Like the
Nile too they have a certain fertilising quality in
* To say that trees are strange to Arabia is not perhaps quite
accurate, for the acacia and the "betun" are found, there in the
wild state, and the date palm of course is numerous "wherever there
is or has been a village. But they are suffiicently rare for the
generic word sejjereh to be almost always understood of fruit trees.
A tree in common parlance, unless further explained, means a palm
tree or a fig, an apricot or a pomegranate tree.