THE DOMESTIC MANNERS AND
CUSTOMS OF THE BEDOUIN
ARABS.
BY ONE WHO HAS NEVER BEEN AMONGST
THEM, BUT CAN IMAGINE EXACTLY WHAT
THEY ARE.
Those Bedouins are curious fellows. You have heard of a race of Jumpers; well, they are a nation of Leapers. We walk, they fly. They are the bats of the human race—not men, and decidedly not angels, but something between the two.
Their houses have no windows lower than the third floor. This is to prevent little boys jumping up. Their windows are not arranged like ours, but have small apertures, like the slits in letter-boxes, slanting downwards, to prevent any one looking into them. Bricks are exceedingly dear, on account of the height of the walls.
A military review of Bedouin Arabs exceeds anything of the sort. At a given signal a whole battalion springs upwards, gets inextricably mingled in one dense flying column, and then falls down again, each man precisely in his previous position. They discharge their muskets when they reach a given height, and no accident ever occurs, unless a raw recruit happens to have sprained his ankle. Some of their light columns advance twelve feet deep; when I say twelve feet deep, of course I mean in the air.
The Monster Sweeps
"A Toss up for the Derby".
It is curious to see them in the streets. If the door is not open, they will take a flying leap through the window, like a harlequin. The first sign of intelligence a Bedouin child gives, is to leap straight out of its cradle. A lid is always placed over it, for the purpose of keeping it down; and when the lid is taken off the child flies out, like a living Jack-in-the-Box.
A steeplechase is with them literally a steeplechase. They have no horses, but clear churches, pillars, obelisks, everything that comes in their way, on foot.
Their animals have, in a smaller degree, the same agile propensities. When two cats dart up into the air, fighting, they are soon lost in the clouds, and you will hear them mollrowing above you for a long time; but I defy you to say, you ever saw both of them come back.
When the Bedouins go out shooting they pursue the game in the air, and do not fire until they are right over the bird's back. It is a mean sport, however, which a real Bedouin gentleman is above doing. But their children catch sparrows easily, by putting salt upon their tails.