By the Way 141 



walking along a line of them and chucking a 

 stone into each, one can generally get a few shots. 

 But karezes serve the traveller's pot in another 

 way. A curious thing about these induced 

 streams is that nearly all of them, hundreds of 

 miles it may be from sea or river, and completely 

 isolated from any other water, in course of time 

 obtain a stock of small fish. The only explanation 

 I have heard attempted is that of wind-blown 

 spores. I cannot say that the fish afford sport, 

 they are usually caught in a sheet ! but their 

 existence is a boon to the traveller, as if at all 

 optimistic, or even hungry, he might be moved 

 to compare them with whitebait. 



Our prehistoric mode of travel, with camels 

 and mules, possessed a certain element of the 

 romantic 



" Like a picture it seemed of the primitive pastoral ages, 

 Fresh with the youth of the world, and recalling Rebecca and 

 Isaac" 



and there were compensations, but both Isaac 

 and Kebecca sometimes felt it a little wasteful 

 of life to spend fifteen days over a distance 

 that would be traversed by an express train in 

 a matter of three hours. Perhaps those were 

 the days a gazelle had been missed, or the 

 chakor had refused to fly the right way. 



