WATER IN THE DESERT. 67 



camp in the middle of the plain shortly after sunset. 

 A small pool two parts mud and two parts brackish 

 water which we passed during the day, and at which 

 we replenished our water-skins, formed the centre of 

 a large Arab encampment, whose flocks of sheep and 

 herds of camels were to be seen straying over the 

 plain in all directions ; but these once passed, all signs 

 of life vanished once more, and the great silence of 

 solitude brooded over the land. Once or twice, it is 

 true, small groups of horsemen, easily distinguishable 

 in the distance by their long lances, would appear 

 suddenly on the summit of some mound, but after 

 taking stock of our party they would as suddenly melt 

 away again, lost to view in the limitless expanse. 



At length on the evening of a cold clear day — 

 for the winds in the winter are bitter and the ther- 

 mometer is apt to sink low — we reached the first 

 villages at the foot of the Jebel Sinjar, a limestone 

 range which, with the Jebel Abdul Azziz, forms the 

 only feature in Mesopotamia which can be termed 

 mountain. All along the footline of the hills small 

 villages, partly Mohammedan and partly Yezidi,^ are 

 to be found, whose inhabitants cultivate the land. 



1 The Yezidis are a people living for the most part scattered over the 

 country between Erivan and Jebel Sinjar. Their origin is unknown, and 

 their religion is described as a mixture of the old Babylonian religion, 

 Zoroastrianism, Manicheeism, and Christianity, and as having also an 

 affinity with that of the Ansariyeh. They were at one time much perse- 

 cuted by the Turks, and owe much of their present freedom to the good 

 offices of Sir Henry Layard, who in 1848 presented delegates from them 

 to Sir Stratford Canning, the British ambassador at Constantinople. 

 "Through his [Sir Stratford Canning's] kindly intercession a firman or 

 imperial order was granted to the Yezidis, which freed them from all 

 illegal impositions, forbade the sale of their children as slaves, secured to 

 them the full enjoyment of their religion, and placed them on the same 

 footing as other sects of the empire. It was further promised that arrange- 

 ments should be made to release them from such military regulations as 

 rendered their service in the army incompatible with the strict observance 



