THE BATTLE OF THE MULETEERS. 
281 
lion of lean and savage-looking Arabs, who looked scowl- 
ingly at us as we passed. Soon after, we passed another en¬ 
campment—an extensive village of tents and straw cabins. 
Horses were tied to stakes about the doors, and herds of buf¬ 
falo, with short thick horns twisted back, grazed in the sur¬ 
rounding marshes. Several lean and wolfish dogs ran fierce¬ 
ly at us, but fled howling as we presented our guns. These 
Bedouins are not the genuine descendants of Hagar, or the 
supposed wild Ishmaelites who still roam the deserts of Arabia. 
They are partially civilized by intermixture with the Syrian 
Arabs, and lead rather a pastoral than a predatory life. 
Those who abide in the valley of El Huleh pay tribute to the 
Turkish Government for the use of the land, and reside upon 
the plains permanently, moving their villages from one part 
to another as the sheiks direct. Large herds of tame buffalo 
find excellent pasturage here during the entire year, and 
upon the produce of these and the cultivation to some extent 
of the soil they contrive to obtain a tolerable subsistence. 
The land in some parts of the valley is exceedingly fertile, 
and seems well adapted to the production of Indian corn, of 
which the Bedouins raise a small quantity. Around the 
bases of the mountains, where the land is not too marshy, 
wheat thrives well by the mere scratching up of the ground 
with rude wooden plows (such as were used in scriptural 
times), and sufficient flour for the people of the valley is pro¬ 
duced with very little labor. Eice is grown in the marshy 
lands, and grass abounds naturally throughout the plain. In 
the vicinity of lake El Huleh tall rushes and flags grow in 
great quantities, which are found useful in building and roof¬ 
ing the huts. It seemed a little strange to us that these 
people should live in the low grounds, their tents and cabins 
floating in water half the time, exposed to the full glare of 
the sun in summer and the piercing winds in winter, while 
not more than a few hundred yards distant, on the sides of the 
mountains, were some very pretty sites for villages, pleasant¬ 
ly shaded by bushes, and protected from floods and storms. 
But there is no accounting for tastes, certainly no accounting 
for the tastes of the Bedouins. Some of the women and 
