i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 549 



and walled in with dams of earth and stone. The water 

 is raised from the well by an apparatus called the Sawany 

 a plural form two or three leathern buckets, suspended 

 from the same well, being always employed together. 

 The bucket is a skin open at the neck, and also at the 

 opposite end, where the aperture is the whole diameter 

 of the skin, and kept from closing by two cross-sticks. 

 The skin is slung over the well by two ropes, or rather 

 twisted thongs of hide, attached before and behind, and 

 loaded with stones. The posterior thong is made to 

 pass over a wooden block raised considerably above the 

 well. The other rope passes over a roller on a lower level. 

 An ox is attached to both thongs, and walks up and down 

 an inclined plane sloping downwards from the well mouth. 

 As he walks up, the skin descends into the well and fills. 

 The driver then turns his beast. As the skin is pulled 

 up its weight hangs down between the mouths, and the 

 water cannot escape. But when it reaches the top, the 

 aperture dependent on the lower pulley is no longer 

 drawn upwards, and the skin discharges itself into a 

 runlet. The use of this apparatus is universal in the 

 Taif district. Only in one garden, the property of an 

 Egyptian, a water-wheel with buckets, drawn by a man 

 climbing up the wheel, was pointed out as a curiosity. 

 The usual Egyptian Saqia with toothed wheels, to be 

 drawn by animals, seems to be quite unknown. The 

 Sawany, like all other appliances of Arabian agriculture, 

 appear to be an ancient invention ; but in the classical 

 lexicons the name is referred to camels that draw water, 

 not to a machine. The march of the Sawany is a pro 

 verbial figure for uninterrupted toil, as we speak of being 

 in the treadmill. 



At Umm el Khamt and onwards to Taif, one is struck 

 by a change in the appearance of the buildings. In the 

 Wady Marr, people live in open cottages without so 

 much as a door. Here the villagers houses look like little 

 castles, each larger farmhouse and its courtyard being con- 



