694 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ing deafening, I concluded to follow his advice ; so, taking the young- 

 ster out, I put him on the ground and gave him a slap as a hint to be 

 off. At first he did not stir, though he kept up his screams ; but, see- 

 ing me retire behind the tent, he ran for his life and soon rejoined his 

 relatives. 



As soon as the old ones caught sight of him they stopped their 

 yelling, and, crowding around him, seemed to examine him very care- 

 fully, after which the whole troop wheeled around and rushed away 

 much quicker than before, as if they had not overcome their natural 

 fear, and risked their lives merely to save the youngster's which 

 shows that these animals treat their young ones more kindly than the 

 Monakees (with all their gods) treat their children. 



The next morning we started at sunrise and ascended the slope of 

 a mountain whose rocks were covered with creepers,* bearing clusters 

 of sweetish berries. To the production of these berries, and a broad- 

 leafed weed (both used for the purpose of intoxication), the Monakees 

 devote a considerable portion of their arable territory, which seemed 

 the more surprising as I was informed that thousands of their poor 

 live in bitter want of their daily bread. Yet the luxuriance of those 

 noxious weeds proves their planters to be expert husbandmen, and 

 they can certainly not be reproached with laziness, whatever may be 

 their other vices. 



After a march of three or four hours we reached the southern slope 

 of a harrat,f and I beheld now for the first time one of those famous 

 rock -kraals of Monghistan, a sort of city, crowning the brow of a dis- 

 tant hill. The houses looked like white dots on the blue heights, but 

 even at this distance I could distinguish a peculiar kind of conical 

 castles that towered high above all other buildings. These piles, the 

 Karman told me, were temples of the Moon-man mosques, so to say 

 some of them so elaborately finished that they had cost wagon-loads 

 of money, and the labor of countless masons. Their very dimensions 

 attested the skill of the architects ; but I marveled that people who 

 could do so much for the moon had done so little for their earth ; the 

 valley at the foot of the harrat was in a wretched condition, a sheer 

 quagmire, studded with lagoons and reed patches, though a little 

 drainage would have turned those bogs into fertile fields. 



Still, Allah has not withdrawn his hand from this country, and at 

 the bank of a little creek farther below I saw bottom-lands that would 

 support more trees to the acre than our poor waddies on a square mile. 

 And even the driest valleys abound with water-signs ; if these poor 

 people had learned the sheriat-wakil,\ every field of their country 

 would be blessed with good wells. 



* "Schling-Pflanzen," twining plants or vines. 



\ Harrat, from harr, heat or fire. A mountain of igneous rocks, a basalt-hill. 

 % Sheriat-wakil, the " water-place science." Pallas says that the Arabian well-finders 

 eschew the tricks of the divining-rod mystics, and follow a system of practical rules that 



