and delightful beverage so well as a person of the desert-one who has travelled in the burning heat of those arid regions for days without tasting fresh water, and perhaps without water of any kind.

The people of the eastern countries have always been, more or less frequently, in their intercourse with distant parts, exposed to privations of this kind -a circumstance which must have given additional force to the invitation of our Saviour: "In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. He that believeth on me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water."* And also to the words of the prophet: † "Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea,

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ORNAMENTS OF WATER-CARRIERS.

come, buy wine and milk without money and without price." And again, the following: "For the Lord thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills."* And among the bitter accusations brought against Job by his friends, in the days of his affliction, Eliphaz says: "Thou hast not given water to the weary to drink, and thou hast withholden bread from the hungry."+ But the Scriptures are full of illustrations of this kind; and in no country, perhaps, in the world, could the idea of water, emblematically used, have such force and meaning, as in the land of the Bible and of the prophets. When God wished to make a great moral impression upon the murmuring Israelites, he commanded Moses to bring water from the rock.‡

The peasant-women are the water-carriers for their own family uses in the East, particularly in Egypt. They come down from the villages along the Nile, in great numbers, generally toward evening, and wade into the river a few steps, dip their waterpots, and bear them off upon their heads to their houses.

On these occasions, especially toward evening, I always observed that they wore a greater profusion of trinkets and rude jewellery than ordinarily; though it is the custom of the eastern women, among the lower classes, to carry their fortunes upon their backs, head, face, and hands.

The masks, which the Turkish and Arab women

• Deut. viii. 7. † Job xxii. 7.

Numbers xx. 8.

DRINKS OF THE ARABS.

73

generally wear, are frequently covered with little gold pieces of money, from their eyes down to a considerable distance below the chin. This, of course, depends upon the riches of the wearer; and some can only afford to wear silver pieces, and very few of them, while others have none at all. This is a kind of sign hung out to indicate the flourishing condition of the person making the display; though, when occasion requires, these bits of money are taken off, and circulated in the market as readily as other coins, that have never been so distinguished. The consequence is, that most of the small gold and silver coins of the East are pierced with holes, that have been made in them for the purpose of fastening them upon the masks and dresses of the women.

The Jewish women, also, of the East, who do not wear masks, hang their gold and silver coins about their necks. I have seen some of them so deeply loaded as to be fairly encumbered with their wealth, though that is not a very common thing among them.

The custom of wearing ornaments, among the water-carriers of the Nile is no doubt a very old one, and may be traced back further, perhaps, than the time of Rebekah, when she came forth, with ornaments, to draw water.*

The Arabs have other drinks than water alonesuch as sherbet of various kinds, coffee, beer, and sometimes wines; though this last, being a prohibited beverage, is rarely taken in public, if at all, by the faithful. Coffee is always passed round to guests,

VOL. I.-10

• Gen. xxiv. 30.

74

CLEANING THE STREETS.

after sherbet and pipes, among the Arabs, as well as by the Syrians and Turks, all of whom seem to be exceedingly hospitable.

But to return to the great store-houses of the Pacha, which are not quite so extensive, probably, as were Pharaoh's, in the sunny times of Joseph, though there appeared to be no lack of corn in Egypt even in these degenerate days. And the Arabs were engaged in carrying it from the Pacha's granary to his wind-mills, about two hundred of which stood along upon the beach, overlooking the sea, near by, and giving to that quarter a very singular appearance.

The loose and wasteful manner in which the simple process of carrying corn to mill was conducted by these loyal subjects of the Pacha, who, it is said, work for nothing and board themselves, illustrated, clearly enough to our minds, that very little regard was paid to economy in point of time, or the saving of corn.

An Arab with a little loose basket, holding scarcely twenty quarts, started off at a lazy walk from the granary, strewing the corn by the way at every step, till he reached the mill. This seemed to excite no surprise, as it was a common thing among them all; so that they literally walked upon a bed of corn from the store-houses to the mills.

The streets had become excessively muddy, from the powerful rains that had been pouring down in floods the day before; and we observed, as we drove along, crowds of Arab women and children scraping up the mud in the streets with their hands, collecting

DOGS OF ALEXANDRIA.

75

it into baskets, pots, pails, and any thing else that they could get for the purpose, and bearing it off upon their heads.

This to me was a novel mode of cleaning streets, and I observed to Mrs. Firkins, that it was really a pity that those poor creatures should be obliged to clear the streets of the mud and filth with no other implements than their bare hands; I thought the Pacha ought at least to furnish them with hoes, wooden shovels, or something of the kind, to save their hands from such rude and hard usage.

"O!" says Mrs. Firkins, "those women were never so happy in all their lives. They look upon that mud, which they are scraping up with their hands and bearing off upon their heads, as a kind of Godsend, somewhat with the same kind of pleasure, perhaps, with which the children of Israel gathered the manna in the desert."

How is that?" said I;" are they not cleaning the streets for the Pacha?"

“Cleaning the streets for the Pacha!" replied Mrs. Firkins-nobody ever heard of such a thing. The Pacha never has the streets cleaned. There are no street-sweepers or scavengers in Alexandria, except those evil-looking dogs that you see lying about the streets, so much to the annoyance of every body."

"Why," said I to Mrs. Firkins, “do they not destroy those dirty dogs, or compel their masters to take care of them, and keep them out of the way?" "Masters!" said Mrs. Firkins, "they have no masters: and a Turk or Mussulman would no sooner