222 TRAVELS IN UPPER 



sugar to make it palatable. The water-melons, 

 on the contrary, are excellent in Upper Egypt, as 

 I have already observed. I found a species or va- 

 riety of them at Kous, which I had not seen till 

 then ; its form is very long, its sides are but 

 slightly marked, and it swells to a very large size. 

 This species, which is not inferior to the rest, the 

 Arabians call nem ; it is also the name of the man- 

 gousfe, the ichneumon of the ancients, a four- 

 footed animal, celebrated with so little reason. 



Dates had begun to ripen ; new ones had been 

 eaten from the beginning of the month, but they 

 were still scarce. The palm-tree which produces 

 them, overtops with its shady summit all the 

 places of Egypt ; whereas the douniy another spe- 

 cies of palm-tree, peculiar to Theba'is, more wild, 

 and for which a single slender stem is not sufH- 

 cient as for the date-tree, loves not to be so close 

 to habitations, but flourishes better in the fields, 

 which it overshadows and adorns. 



The real acacia, which distils gum arabic from 

 its trunk and branches *, grows commonly on the 

 parched and almost barren plains of these identical 

 parts of Upper Egypt. Its port, for the most part 

 stunted ; its trunk crooked and short ; its branches 

 long and few, with n^row and thinly scattered 



* Mimosa nihtlca, Lin. 



foliage 



