32 Bedouin Tribes of the EiLphrates. [en. xvn. 



called it El Khabra. This was no doubt in ancient 

 times a high road from Palmyra, and, likely enough, 

 the very one along which Zenobia fled when defeated 

 by the Eomans. There is now a fairly well-defined 

 camel-track, as some of the corn traffic between 

 Bagdad and Damascus passes this way. The soil 

 was light and sandy, and full of kemeyes, which 

 every here and there cropj^ed up above ground. 

 ]\Iohammed tells us that they sell for one piastre and 

 XI half the oke, or two-pence halfpenny the pound, in 

 Damascus, and two and a half piastres at Aleppo. 

 This year they are so plentiful, that while we were 

 pitching our tents last night, Mohammed picked up 

 a large basketful in little over a quarter of an hour. 

 I counted them. There were a hundred and two, — 

 about the size of potatoes, — but a few were very 

 large, and one measured twelve inches round. He 

 reckoned them to w^eigh six okes. So that a man 

 might get a camel load, two hundred okes, worth 

 thirty-five or forty shillings in the day, but for this 

 he would have to travel a couple of hundred miles, 

 and fast too, for the kemeyes will not keep more 

 than a few days, unless sliced up and dried, when 

 they last practically for ever. Mohammed only 

 recollects one season as good as the present one, and 

 that was when he was a boy twenty years ago. The 

 heavy rains and snows this winter are probaljly the 

 cause of the present plenty, at which all the country 

 is rejoicing. The tribes are now independent of 

 corn for the year. 



