394 
PTOLEMETA TO MERGE. 
by him a token of our regard to our old friend Hashi, the Bey’s 
secretary. 
We have already said that the water of Merge is collected in pools 
in different parts of the valley ; and we soon found that in exchang- 
ing that of the wells and cisterns which we had quitted for it, we 
had not much improved the quality of our liquor. It was soon 
discovered that the water we procured from the pools was not quite 
so clear as it might have been, and we thought we perceived a peculiar 
taste in it which did not seem to be its natural flavour. 
A very little observation convinced us we were right; for the 
pools were used by the Arabs, not only for drinking, but for washing 
and bathing also ; and we soon found that the last-mentioned cere- 
monies, though not often resorted to by Arabs in general, were more 
particularly essential to the comfort of those at Merge, from circum- 
stances which we would willingly conceal ; since they will scarcely be 
considered as perfectly in character with the highly-romantic features 
of the country which they inhabited. 
We are not, at the same time, prepared to assert, that the causes 
which more peculiarly call for ablution (considered as a matter of 
comfort) did not actually exist in patriarchal days amidst scenes 
such as we have described ; and if we do not find them hinted at in 
the allusions to early times which are made in this age of refine- 
ment, it is only, perhaps, that too minute a detail would be incon- 
sistent with the ideas which we wish to excite of our forefathers. 
In confessing that the Arabs who washed themselves in the pools 
of Merge were induced to do so more frequently than they would 
