1 68 Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates, [en. xxm. 



this to drink. There are however wells in certain 

 places, and in others pools of rain water more or 

 less abundant according to the season. Their posi- 

 tion is well kno^^^.l to the tribes. By the middle 

 of April the sun begins to show its power, the pools 

 are exhausted, the grass has grown yellow and shed 

 its seed, and all this wealth of pasture disap2)ears. 

 Then the trilies cross the hills, rejoin their flocks 

 and enter into treaties with the towns. Shearing 

 jjegins in May, and the three year old colts and 

 camels find purchasers, and the year goes round 

 again. 



Such is the physical aspect of the desert. There 

 remains to be described that of the two great rivers 

 which traverse it, and which introduce two new 

 features strange to Arabia, running water and trees.'" 

 The valleys are so nearly similar that a description 

 of one, the Euphrates, will suffice for both. The 

 Euphrates when it appears at the edge of the desert 

 is already a full grown river, as large as the Danube 

 at Belgrade, and flowing at the rate of four and 

 a half miles an hour. Its waters are turbid, but 

 sweet and pure as the water of the Nile. Like the 

 Nile too they have a certain fertilising quality in 



* To say that trees are strange to Arabia is not perhaps quite 

 accurate, for the acacia and the "betun" are found, there in the 

 wild state, and the date palm of course is numerous "wherever there 

 is or has been a village. But they are suffiicently rare for the 

 generic word sejjereh to be almost always understood of fruit trees. 

 A tree in common parlance, unless further explained, means a palm 

 tree or a fig, an apricot or a pomegranate tree. 



