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

32 Bedouin Tribes of the EiLphrates. [en. xvn.
called it El Khabra. This was no doubt in ancient
times a high road from Palmyra, and, likely enough,
the very one along which Zenobia fled when defeated
by the Eomans. There is now a fairly well-defined
camel-track, as some of the corn traffic between
Bagdad and Damascus passes this way. The soil
was light and sandy, and full of kemeyes, which
every here and there cropj^ed up above ground.
]\Iohammed tells us that they sell for one piastre and
XI
half the oke, or two-pence halfpenny the pound, in
Damascus, and two and a half piastres at Aleppo.
This year they are
so plentiful, that while we were
pitching our tents last night, Mohammed picked up
a large basketful in little over a quarter of
I counted them.
an hour.
There were a hundred and two,
about the size of potatoes,—but a few were very
large, and one measured twelve inches round. He
reckoned them to w^eigh six okes. So that a man
might get a camel load, two hundred okes, worth
thirty-five or forty shillings in the day, but for this
he would have to travel a couple of hundred miles,
and fast too, for the kemeyes will not keep more
than a few days, unless sliced up and dried, when
they last practically for ever. Mohammed only
recollects one season as good as the present one, and
that was when he was a boy twenty years ago. The
heavy rains and snows this winter are
probaljly the
cause of the present plenty, at which all the country
is rejoicing. The tribes are now independent of
corn for the year.