OCR Text |
Show Bedouins and Water. It is not unusual to hear a Bedouin upon reaching a camp where water fs offered him refuse it with the remark. "I drank only yesterday." On the Bedouins' long marches across dry countries the size of the water skins is nicely calculated to just outlast the journey, and they rarely allow themselves them-selves to break the habit of abstemiousness, abstemi-ousness, as this would be sure to make their next water fast all the harder. They are accustomed from infancy to regard water as a most precious commodity com-modity and use it with religious economy. econ-omy. They know every hollow and nook in the mountains where water may be found. Their camels and goats, which they take with them on their marches to supply them with milk and meat, live principally on the scanty herbage and foliage of the thorny mimosa. Neither men nor animals an-imals drink more than once in forty-eight forty-eight hours. No wonder they can subsist where invaders quickly perish. |