DESERT POOLS. 407 



our own country at Carisbrook Castle in the Isle of 

 Wight, which shows how perfect such Roman works were. 



Everyone will also doubtless be familiar with the 

 numerous references, which are made with regard to 

 wells in the Scriptures, which show the importance 

 which was evidently attached to them at this remote 

 period, in what are probably the earliest authentic 

 historical records of the human race. 



In many of the pools and shallower wells throughout the 

 desert the quality and quantity of the water depend very 

 much upon the season one year it will be sweet and 

 good, and the next perhaps it will be brackish, or 

 even of so noxious a quality as to cause disease and 

 death among the animals that have to drink of it; 

 then again some of them become entirely dry during 

 certain years, but the water perhaps reappears the 

 following year. * In the regions where occasional falls 

 of torrential rains occur at uncertain intervals, the 

 watering places often consist of pits, or shallow ex- 

 cavations scratched in the sandy plain, and here and 

 there of pools and other natural reservoirs, some of which 

 are of very considerable extent, but many of these 

 become exhausted during the dry season, while others 

 turn salt and become quite undrinkable, being salter 

 even than the sea. 



The whole of the watering places of the desert are, 

 however, far from being known, and there are doubtless 

 many waters which are visited by and known only 

 to the wild animals; and not unfrequently these are 

 discovered by the Arab hunters following the trail of 

 some of these creatures ; the fountain will then probably 



* See Le Desert et Le Soudan, par M. le Comte D'Escayrac de 

 Lauture, Paris, 1853, p. 67. 



