[135] The manner in which reports are spread and exaggerated in the Desert is frequently highly amusing. In all encampments there are idle vagabonds who live by carrying news from tribe to tribe, thereby earning a dinner and spending their leisure hours. As soon as a stranger arrives, and relates anything of interest to the Arabs, some such fellow will mount his ready-saddled deloul, and make the best of his way to retail the news in a neighbouring tent, from whence it is carried, in the same way, to others. It is extraordinary how rapidly a report spreads in this manner over a very great distance. Sofuk sent to inform the British resident at Baghdad, of the siege and fall of Acre, many days before the special messenger dispatched to announce that event reached the city; and I have frequently rejected intelligence received from Bedouins, on account of the apparent impossibility of its coming to me through such a source, which has afterwards proved to be true.
[136] Nineveh and its Remains, vol. i. p. 93.
[137] I have elsewhere described the ruins and springs of Abou Maria. (Nineveh and its Remains, vol. i. p. 257.)
[138] The Tigris this year had risen much higher than usual. I have already mentioned that the plain of Nimroud was completely under water; opposite Mosul the flood nearly reached the mounds of Kouyunjik and Nebbi Yunus.
[139] Burckhardt (Notes on the Bedouins, p. 269) gives the following account of the mode of preparing them:—“The Arabs in preparing locusts as an article of food, throw them alive into boiling water, with which a good deal of salt has been mixed: after a few minutes they are taken out and dried in the sun. The head, feet, and wings are then torn off; the bodies are cleansed from the salt and perfectly dried; after which process whole sacks are filled with them by the Bedouins. They are sometimes eaten broiled in butter; and they often constitute materials for a breakfast when spread over unleavened bread mixed with butter.” It has been conjectured that the locust eaten by John the Baptist in the wilderness was the fruit of a tree; but it is more probable that the prophet used a common article of food, abounding even in the Desert.
[140] Cory’s Fragments, page 30.
[141] The authorities respecting this god are collected in Selden, “De Dis Syris,” and in Beyer’s commentary. Abarbanel, in his commentary on Samuel, says that Dagon had the form of a fish, from the middle downwards, with the feet and hands of a man.
[142] 1 Sam. v. 4.
[143] Judges, xvi. 23.
[144] Joshua, xv. 41. From the connection of this verse with the 33rd, it would appear that the town was in a valley.