SUMMER ABODES OF THE EELAUTS. 475 
habits; and delegating their authority over the tribe to the 
elders, or chieftains next in rank. 
These people, though despising settled habitation, claim a sort 
of prescriptive right, derived from their ancestors ; and from 
time immemorial, many of them pretend to certain mountain 
districts and tracts of pasturage, which they keep with the 
greatest tenacity; maintaining their ground against any en¬ 
croaching tribe with all the determination of property ; and often 
the disputes of rival shepherds on small infringements, bring on 
the most fatal consequences; engendering blood and feuds to 
distant generations. It is impossible to look on these people, 
and observe their usages, without acknowledging the illustrations 
they may afford of the manners of the early patriarchs of Holy 
Writ; their tented lives, roving pasturage, and the contests 
which often take place between their herdsmen, and those of 
others, for a well, or a track of grass. 
In the winter, the Eelauts either inhabit temporary huts, or 
follow the sun into warmer districts ; the empire of Persia being 
sufficiently extended to yield a temperate climate somewhere, 
in almost all seasons. Their summer abodes consist of large 
black tents, made of woven horse-hair ; the sides being matting, 
or dried rushes. They are usually pitched in a quadrangular 
form, on the banks of their hereditary rivers, and under the 
brow of the mountains which had shadowed their forefathers for 
many generations. Hence, though they wander, it is yet within 
bounds. They have a country, and only change their place in 
it. The Nomade tribes of Arabia and of Tartary bear the same 
character; possessing an extended inheritance, though it be only 
a desert. And this distinction decidedly marks an essential 
difference between these various nations, and the people we call 
3 p 2 
