[59] The tarbûsh is a red skull cap worn by females: round it the handkerchief which forms the turban is attached. Sereah is a white slave or concubine.
[60] This bulta or balta, a kind of battle-axe, was the emblem of authority which El Gezzàr generally bore about with him. It is said that upon the retreat of the French from before Acre, El Gezzàr, to show his sense of Sir W. S. Smith’s success, gave this balta into the hands of the gallant commodore, and said to him—“You now represent myself: exercise for twenty-four hours the power with which you are invested, in what acts you please.” Sir Sydney ordered the prison doors to be thrown open, and gave the prisoners their liberty.
[61] Squires of the bed-chamber.
[62] Governor.
[63] II. Samuel, c. xx. v. 3. And David took the ten women, his concubines, whom he had left to keep the house, and put them inward, and fed them, but went not in unto them: so they were shut up unto the day of their death.
[64] Zyb is the ancient Ecdippa.—Poc.
[65] There is reason to believe that pay-gates and toll-bars were of frequent occurrence in Judea and Palestine. Capernaum, in the New Testament, is no other than a compound of Guffer and nâam.
[66] Since that time, I have traversed this same road five times, and on every occasion I have observed some persons so alarmed at the danger to which they were exposed as to choose to lead their horses over rather than to remain mounted.
[67] I measured the largest of these basins or reservoirs on the top, and found its circumference to be eighty paces. It was much damaged by time and use, but seemed, when perfect, to have been of a heptagonal or hexagonal form. This reservoir alone supplied water to four pair of mill-stones, which were rented at the rate of 2500 piasters (£75) a year each pair.
[68] The Kasmia would seem to be the ancient Leontes, as marked on d’Anville’s map of Palestine.